Cosmetics baron Chris Tawil is an expert at making huge sums of money very quickly. Back in 2008, he and his business partner sister Linda Tawil were middle-class San Fernando Valley residents; that year, they founded Morphe Brushes, which began with a tiny retail shop in Burbank. In 2013, the pair launched Morphe’s cosmetics arm, which quickly became YouTube-famous for its many lucrative collabs with top influencers — most famously Jeffree Star, Jaclyn Hill, and James Charles. By 2017, the brother-and-sister duo had sold a majority stake in Morphe for hundreds of millions to a San Francisco private equity firm; 2019 brought a growth investment from General Atlantic that reportedly valued Morphe at north of $2 billion. And the Bugatti-driving Tawils are now two of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the greater L.A. area.
Tawil has since turned his attention from makeup to real estate. Last January, in a deal brokered by Branden and Rayni Williams of Williams & Williams at The Beverly Hills Estates, he paid movie star Jason Statham $18.5 million in cash for a redone oceanfront Malibu home that he’s now flipped for a whopping $23.5 million — a $5 million profit minus taxes, realtor fees, and a year of carrying costs. The buyers are multibillionaire ex-hedge fund mogul Stanley Druckenmiller and his wife Fiona, who already own the larger house next door, purchased from Wallis Annenberg in 2017 for $36 million.
Best described as an organically contemporary take on a midcentury beach shack, the nearly 4,000-square-foot house sits in guard-gated Malibu Colony and was extensively renovated and expanded by Statham, who painted the place a crisp ebony black and filled it with a designer collection of Danish furniture and accessories. The property was photographed for Architectural Digest in 2019.
The open-concept floorplan includes spacious living and family rooms with radiant-heated Belgian floors and floor-to-ceiling windows with mesmerizing whitewater views. The subdued decor also boasts cream-colored walls, at least one wood-burning brick fireplace, and French doors that open to a courtyard that separated the main house from the detached two-car garage and its upstairs guest quarters. Other amenities include an outdoor spa, plus a clerestory window-equipped master retreat with custom teak shelving a private oceanfront balcony.
Even without his Malibu digs, Tawil still maintains a baller-worthy collection of L.A. real estate. In addition to several small houses and a warehouse or two, he still owns a $12.5 million vacant lot in guard-gated Hidden Hills, which he bought from Dr. Dre and his estranged wife Nicole Young in 2017. Although Tawil has previously said he’d like to build a mega-compound with a 30-car underground garage on the property, which happens to sit next door to his sister’s $12 million mansion, those plans have yet to materialize.
For now, Tawil’s main residence is a $9.3 million Calabasas estate. Located within the double-gated Estates at the Oaks enclave, he purchased that 16,000-square-foot behemoth in 2018 from Tamar Braxton and her ex-husband Vincent Herbert.