Witness History
Witness History
Godfather of manicures
Up next
March 29, 2023
9 minutes
Available for over a year
In November 1975, Vietnamese Navy commander Minh Nguyen, left behind his macho military life and retrained as a manicurist. He migrated from Vietnam to the United States during the fall of Saigon.
He went on to open a beauty school in Little Saigon, California and encouraged thousands of Vietnamese refugees to become nail technicians. Today, more than 40,000 students have graduated from Minh’s beauty schools and they have helped establish Vietnamese-Americans as the mainstay of the nail salon industry.
Minh’s wife Kien talks to Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty.
(Photo: Minh Nguyen. Credit: Minh Nguyen)