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Signing up a Hollywood actress as the face of a beauty brand is common practice nowadays. But Max Factor has taken the unusual step of appointing a star who has been dead for more than half a century.
Marilyn Monroe has been unveiled as the company's "global glamour ambassador" and will star in its 2015 advertising campaigns.
They will highlight the role make-up played in transforming mousey Norma Jeane Mortenson into the blonde bombshell of Some Like It Hot.
Monroe was a Max Factor client in the 1940s, when the brand had a beauty parlour on Hollywood Boulevard and catered to the starlets of the day.
According to the company, it was Max Factor jnr, then president of the company, who was responsible for Monroe's trademark look (although it was Sylvia Barnhart, a colourist at another salon, who first dyed Monroe's hair blonde).
Last year Monroe was ranked sixth in Forbes magazine's annual list of the highest-earning dead celebrities, making an estimated £11-million.