Billionaire Entrepreneur Carolyn Aronson Is Diving Into Superyacht Collecting

Most people imagine the typical yacht owner as a Thurston Howell III type. Carolyn Aronson is pivoting the stereotype of a yachtie—70-something, Anglo Saxon, male—in a compelling new direction. The Puerto Rican-born, American-raised, self-made billionaire went from foster care to haircare before building a global beauty empire that turns over more than $500 million annually. Her successful brand, It’s A 10 Haircare, has also helped fund some of her 14 start-ups, from a record label to real-estate development. These days, her latest side hustle is a 177-foot Mangusta GranSport 54 superyacht that she helped design with the shipyard. The boat’s name, She’s A 10 Too, is a riff not only on her haircare line but also on her first yacht, the 164-foot Oceanfast Mystique, which she renamed She’s a 10. One thing to understand about Aronson: She’s no yachtie, but grew up in Detroit’s auto-focused culture before moving to Fort Lauderdale’s Atlantic coast. “I’d never stepped foot on a yacht before owning one, but I love the ocean and I wanted to find a way to get to it,” she says. That turned out to be the Oceanfast, which came with the bonus of being designed by the legendary Jon Bannenberg, considered the godfather of modern yacht design. She bought the $8.5 million yacht for almost half price in 2013 and soon started cruising the waters of South Florida and the Bahamas. “I knew [Mystique] needed some work, but she was a jet boat with a 30-knot top speed and perfect for hitting all the Bahamian islands I live so close to,” says Aronson. The entrepreneur’s love of speed—she owns a motorcycle, a 1967 Corvette with a 650-horsepower engine, and an Embraer Legacy 650 private jet—is matched by her love of learning. “I’m a hybrid of the Latina blood that runs through my veins and the amazing family that adopted me and raised me, which were blonde-haired, blue-eyed, intellectual Americans,” she says. “They always taught me to learn, learn, learn. As a teenager my father, a Ford executive, took me to tech seminars and empowered me. It made me realize I could do whatever I set my mind to.” Aronson began flipping real estate in her 20s (current projects include a two-acre waterfront plot on Miami’s Gore Island), bought her first hair salon at 30 and made her first million in her 40s. Now aged 59 and married with five kids, her billion-dollar empire spans hair products and cosmetics, to aviation investments and philanthropic initiatives. Beyond the boardroom, she indulges her passion for interior design, including leading the full interior refit for She’s A 10. It was a project that was challenging but satisfying, and gave her a sense of what she really wanted from her next yacht. In 2024, Aronson made the leap into new builds after taking delivery of the third hull in Mangusta’s GranSport 54 series. The 177-foot yacht is fast, with a top end of 30 knots, thanks to four MTU 16V 2000 engines and the planing hull, but is capable of a 4,500-nautical-mile range. The series’ first hull, El Leon, was the first Mangusta to cross the Atlantic on its own bottom. “The sistership to my yacht has sailed around the world and I’d like to follow the owner’s itinerary,” she says. “This is going to be a different animal to my previous boat, and the first time that I’ll properly be cruising throughout Europe, which I’m super excited about.” Aronson says she designed “every little stitch” of the interior, pushing the Mangusta yard “to the brink. I really challenged them to create something wholly unique from anything that they’ve built before.” Aronson’s list of changes from the standard layout included substantial restructuring of the interior to make it more family-friendly. The main salon has a large sitting area with a statement bar made from Panda marble, a stone that also features in the master ensuite. The adjacent dining area was moved to the sky lounge on the deck above—the first GranSport 54 to have an enclosed sky lounge rather than an open sundeck. It was a decision made by the Italian yard in collaboration with exterior designer Alberto Mancini to make add appeal to the American market. “One of the features I loved about my Oceanfast was the large floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room, the openness, airiness, and lots of glass, and this particular Mangusta has all of that,” Aronson explains. “The sky lounge is a beautiful area to eat where you’re surrounded by windows.” The pool on the foredeck was made deeper, which required reengineering the supporting steel beams. “I knew it would be an area where we’d spend a lot of time and a 3-foot-deep pool wouldn’t cut it for my really tall family.” At the stern is a beach club that opens on three sides, with a custom floating dock for jet skis and tenders, while the primary suite, one of six guest cabins, has a private balcony that folds down to reveal a glass floor. Aronson spends time aboard making family memories, but she’s always in entrepreneurial mode looking for opportunities. “Everything is a business, including yachts, and when you’ve never done it before you have to entrench yourself and figure it out quickly,” she says. As a result, She’s A 10 Too also has to work, hosting corporate and social-media events, though Aronson admits her approach to day-chartering is erratic. “My life is also erratic, so my poor crew get thrown into some last-minute big events.” That’s anything from hosting a wedding for Below Deck’s Captain Sandy to quayside soirees for 70 people. Ultimately, Aronson believes yacht ownership helps find a balance between working and playing hard. “I’m one of the few self-made female yacht owners and I’m a hundred percent Puerto Rican, both of which I feel exceptionally proud of,” she says. “I got here through a lifelong commitment to doing what I love, I’ve just been fortunate enough to ride the right waves.” Which she’ll continue to do on her new Mangusta. ## Implicazioni per i Collezionisti di Asset di Lusso Questo sviluppo del mercato evidenzia l'importanza crescente della **gestione digitale degli asset di lusso**. 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