Baltimore native Reggie Wells, master makeup artist who styled Oprah Winfrey, dies

Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun
·4 min read
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Reggie Wells, a master makeup artist who styled Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, died Jan. 8 at a Randallstown nursing home. He was 76 and lived in Gwynn Oak.

His niece Kristina Conner said he died of “natural causes.”

Born in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore, he was the son of John Wells, a Mass Transit Administration bus driver, and Ada Wells, a nurse. A Baltimore City College graduate, he earned a fine arts degree and master’s degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

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As a young man, he delivered groceries. Mr. Wells credited the neighborhood grocery store owner, a woman he called his “Jewish mother,” with giving him the confidence to attend MICA.

He initially taught art at Garrison Middle School before heading to New York in 1979.

“For 20 years, Wells has been making one of the country’s wealthiest women look like, well, a million bucks,” said a 2008 Sun story about a visit to Baltimore to assist in a cancer charity fundraiser. “Today, he will come home to show women here how they, too, can accentuate their beauty.”

He said he left Baltimore “with a lot of dreams, dreams to become one of the world’s greatest makeup artists.”

“I love Baltimore, and everything that I am today came out of the Baltimore experience,” he said.

He initially spotted Oprah Winfrey, who co-anchored a WJZ newscast, when he was living and working in Baltimore. He asked her whether he could do her makeup.

“He had never done makeup professionally, but he had practiced on 13 girls from his homeroom class who joined (‘whether they liked it or not’) the Grooming and Modeling Club he created at the middle school,” The Sun article said.

Ms. Winfrey turned him down, saying she didn’t need his assistance. Over the course of a few months, he called repeatedly and she continued to tell him that she didn’t need his help.

While in New York Mr. Wells initially promoted Jordache jeans. He also went from selling makeup from a counter at Macy’s to doing the makeup for celebrities such as Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin.

“I thought everyone was going to recognize what I did,” he said of his early days in New York. “What I forgot was there were 20,000 other people thinking the same thing.”

“Then, in 1986, Wells was called in to do Winfrey’s makeup for an Essence magazine cover. Because Winfrey knew his name but had never seen him, Wells asked everyone on the shoot not to tell her who he was,” The Sun’s 2008 account said.

He said in the story when he had completed Ms. Winfrey’s makeup, she said, “I wish I could look like this all the time!”

“You could have looked like this five years ago,” he said.

Mr. Wells became Ms. Winfrey’s makeup artist for magazine covers and personal engagements. In 1990, he became her regular makeup artist for “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and moved to the Chicago area.

“That’s my first love … letting these women know there’s no excuse for an ugly woman,” he said of his occupation. “There’s no excuse for an ugly woman because we have so many things available now. … It’s just a wonderful, wonderful time to be living because you have all these things at your disposal. And I’m not talking about surgery.”

He got magazine work — including shoots for Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar and 65 Essence magazine covers.

He also did ads for Maybelline, Almay and Fashion Fair. He discovered a particular need among African American stars and models for whom makeup options designed for their skin tones were limited at the time.

“Reggie was skilled in colors and could figure it all out. With Oprah, he changed the lighting too. He was truly an artist and he realized that there were not many makeup tones for African American skin,” said his niece Kristina Conner. “Later in life, he was [creative director] on a line — Hissyfit — to blend and enhance our features.”

“He was mentor to so many in the field whom he trained and inspired,” she said

“I became my own chemist … blending two browns and a yellow or red,” Mr. Wells said of creating colors for people with different skin tones.

Mr. Wells volunteered at charity workshops not only to teach women his beauty secrets, but also help raise money for various cancer organizations.

He appeared at the Inner Harbor’s Renaissance Hotel and Baltimore bookstores to promote his book, “Painting Faces.”

Survivors include his three sisters, Patricia Banks and Orrie Wright, both of Baltimore; and Priscilla Wells-Tingle, of Georgia; and nieces and nephews.

Services were held at the Wylie Funeral Home.