The story of the BrowGal starts in 1992, when Crooks, who was studying fine art at the Royal Academy of Art at the time, found herself in need of extra money to fund her school-supply purchases and started doing makeup on the side. Then, she says, "I pursued brows because I couldn't put my name on and be proud of my beauty portfolio photographs because something was always off," she tells Refinery29. "Having a classically-trained eye, when I looked deeper, I saw that the symmetry was off because of the eyebrows. When I moved back to Los Angeles, I noticed a model had bad brows on a shoot I was doing, and I laid her down on the floor and began tweezing and waxing her brows, and mixed a [brow] color for her. I couldn't have my portfolio looking off any longer!"