Chris Tawil isn’t one to rest on his proverbial laurels. Ten years ago, the ethnically Lebanese businessman was just another middle-class L.A. resident living near the far-flung suburban community of Porter Ranch. But then the now-44-year-old and his younger sister Linda co-founded Morphe, which grew from a single store in Burbank peddling makeup brushes into one of the world’s fastest-growing cosmetic brands. Much of the company’s growth has been fueled by its ubiquitous presence on YouTube and social media, particularly its collabs with big-name influencers like Jeffree Star, Jaclyn Hill, and James Charles.
In 2017, the Tawils reportedly sold a big chunk of the business to a San Francisco private equity group for hundreds of millions. And in 2019, private equity company General Atlantic acquired a majority stake in the business, valuing Morphe at north of $2 billion.
Things have been similarly fast-paced on the real estate scene. Last year, Tawil and his wife Nancy paid $18.5 million in cash for the Malibu Colony beach house of action star Jason Statham. That house was flipped, earlier this year, for a whopping $23.5 million to Tawil’s next-door neighbor, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, and now Tawil has upgraded to an estate on coveted Malibu Road, just outside the guard-gated Malibu Colony community. The Bugatti-driving makeup mogul paid exactly $24 million cash for his latest acquisition, records reveal.
Built in 1970 and last sold in ’78, the blocky house was long owned by Burton Sperber, a landscape tycoon and prominent philanthropist to Jewish causes, and his wife Charlene. The Sperbers were the parents of the late “Back to the Future” actress Wendie Jo Sperber, who succumbed to breast cancer in 2005, at just 47. Burton Sperber himself died in 2011; Charlene passed in 2020 and the Malibu house was sold on behalf of their substantial estate at an enormous profit — records show the Sperbers originally bought the now $24 million digs for a paltry $950,000.