When Andrew, the second and last child Tom and Bebe would have, came along, it was a welcome relief. Where Alice was stubborn and intolerable, Andrew was cheerful and quiet...until his older sister pulled his ear or tugged his hair out of jealousy. Despite the initial rift between the siblings, Alice grew to love her little brother and she took it upon herself to guide him through the rough waters of life. After all, it was her sisterly duty.

The first obstacle was enduring Tom and Bebe's separation and subsequent divorce while the Quick children were still young. Because Alice had a couple of years on Andrew, she took the brunt of the bad news and did her best to appease her younger brother as their parents battled over custody and belongings and their family home in Gramercy Park. Ultimately, Bebe ended up keeping the apartment and the children, who were then shuffled between their mother and father for weekends, holidays and summer vacations as the years wore on.

One of the perks of divorced parents was that it meant twice the number of gifts, twice the allowance and more room to get away with things when Alice found herself in trouble (which she did—often). Alice quickly found that material items filled the void left by her father's physical absence and her mother's emotional one, and Tom and Bebe—more concerned with being successful in their careers than in parenting—gave their children anything they asked for to keep them quiet and occupied.

So Alice found herself surrounded by designer labels and exotic vacations and the finer things in life. She took great care in how she presented herself to the world, and that person was posh and beautiful and untouchable. The facade never cracked, not even when her father married a woman half his age, and not when Bebe married a man with a daughter who was just as spoiled and selfish as Alice was.

Somehow, though, Alice found a hobby that didn't include sabotaging her step-sister's life or squeezing money out of her parents' wallets: art. It was a quiet passion, one she didn't share with friends or family (Andrew was the one exception), and it led to even more hobbies that required an eye for detail and a steady hand. Alice's paintings on canvas turned into paintings on herself, and when she was old enough to push herself out of the nest, she had an idea of what she wanted to do with her life.

Tom encouraged her to relax and enjoy herself because she didn't need to work (and because he couldn't imagine a world in which his daughter had a 9-to-5 like everybody else). Bebe filled out college applications to Ivy Leagues around the country, determined her oldest was going to get a good education, stop being a selfish brat and find a job that granted her a comfortable life. But Alice had different ideas: beauty school. She already spent so much effort in perfecting her own appearance, and her reasoning was that it only made sense to want to perfect other people as well. Tom humored Alice's dreams to be a makeup artist while Bebe lived in denial, even as Alice enrolled in the Make-up Designory's New York campus with only her self-taught skills and confidence to guide her.

After finishing her courses, Alice expected work to find her. But weeks of freedom turned into months, and she grew bored of the lack of routine in her life and decided to put more effort into honing her craft. She volunteered to do friends' makeup before a night out. She offered her services when a cousin got married. She even started poking around on Craigslist and Model Mayhem in search of someone who wanted to look good for cheap. But Alice didn't want to be your standard wedding makeup artist; she was interested in edgier work, so she threw herself into taking on more clients until it ultimately led her to her big break in the fashion industry.

Now 30, Alice lives in an apartment in Brooklyn with a cat and works for herself. One day is never the same as the next, and the schedule she sets for herself is always sporadic. She's allowed to be pickier about which projects and shoots she chooses to work, which gives her the satisfaction of truly being her own boss. And that's something money can't buy.