LEAH KOVITZ
Israeli heritage key for teacher turned skin care expert
SHEILA WILENSKY
AJP Assistant Editor

Leah Kovitz speaks five languages, but the language of giving may be her most meaningful. From counseling in Israeli youth centers, to mothering, to providing the comfort of skin care, “sharing my culture, sharing the authentic Leah, trying to respect different cultures” is what keeps her going, she says.
Since her arrival in Tucson in 1979 to head the skin care department at Canyon Ranch, Kovitz, 61, has developed products and treatments based on beauty secrets from Israel, and delivered lectures internationally.
Recalling her roots, Kovitz explains that her mother came to Israel as a little girl from Bombay, India, by way of Persia and Iraq. Her mother made the trek with her mother and brothers, who upon their arrival were thrown into a Bethlehem jail after being pronounced “illegals” by the British.
Kovitz’s mother later worked as a cleaning woman for a British family, where, says Kovitz, she was treated badly. As a result, her mother always wanted Kovitz, her four brothers and one sister to have “what she couldn’t have. My mom was a role model, always pushing us because she couldn’t go to school.”
Kovitz’s father spoke Arabic and came to Israel from Iraq as an 11-year-old. Growing up, Kovitz spoke Hebrew at home, studied English in elementary school, French and Arabic in high school and Spanish in college.
At age 15, Kovitz went to modeling school classes weekly. During her second year of high school, she attended at night, helping her family by working during the day in social services at city hall in her hometown, Holon. Kovitz’s modeling training got her involved in make-up and skin care. Always looking for more challenges, Kovitz began a teacher-training program during her fourth year of high school, which she completed the following year.
When military service intervened in her life, Kovitz was sent to Gaza for two years because she spoke Arabic. After completing her service in 1967, she took charge of transportation issues — including the licensing of fishermen — as a full-time job, leaving home at 5 a.m. to get to Gaza. Meanwhile, the young teacher ran three youth centers in Holon, and would drive from Gaza to Tel Aviv to tutor two sisters a few evenings a week. “I was one of the few young women in Israel to have a car at that time,” she says.
During her Gaza stint, Kovitz met Belgian scientist Roger Doucette and his family while spending Passover at a resort in Netanyahu. “I consider him like a father,” she says. In her early 20s, Kovitz decided to “take a break from school” and went to live with the “very pro-Israel” Christian Doucette family in Belgium.
It was there that she met her first husband, Bob Kovitz, an American who was stationed at NATO headquarters near Mons, where Kovitz taught officers Hebrew. In 1971, the couple married in Israel. The following year, Kovitz’s mother was a passenger on the Sabina Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels, which was hijacked by PLO sympathizers. As the plane was forced to fly from Brussels to Rome, a female hijacker “sat on mom’s lap with a grenade, terrorizing her because she understood Arabic,” she says. When she heard this, says Kovitz, “I thought I would go crazy. I felt very guilty. My mother wouldn’t leave the house for a year.”
Kovitz moved to Los Angeles in 1972 when her husband enrolled in graduate school at the University of Southern California. She taught and was later the principal at Beverly Hills Hebrew School. “I didn’t even know how to get to Beverly Hills, and I did it,” notes Kovitz.
While living in Beverly Hills, she treated herself to a facial, and realized that it “wasn’t the way we give facials in Israel or in Europe.” Recognizing that she had the expertise to provide top-notch skin care herself, Kovitz was motivated to go into the field professionally. She had already completed a one-year skin care program in high school and also attended advanced skin care institutes in Paris.
Kovitz and her husband moved to Simi Valley, Calif., in 1973, where she became a consultant to area plastic surgeons. She ran skin care operations at The Oaks in Ojai, Calif., where she met Canyon Ranch owner, Mel Zuckerman. After he received one of her facials, Zuckerman asked Kovitz to start a skin care department at his new spa. “I’m not a cactus girl,” she replied, before moving to Tucson in 1979 to head Canyon Ranch’s skin care department for eight years. Kovitz developed treatments such as the Parisian Body Polish — the only body exfoliating treatment ever awarded a U.S. government trademark, she says. She opened the Westin La Paloma skin care department in 1987. Kovitz continued offering skin care consultations and giving lectures to Canyon Ranch guests for 25 years and at conferences internationally.
Since 1983, Kovitz has worked with the American Cancer Society’s Look Good/Feel Better program, assisting cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatments, and teaching courses. “This is like my baby,” says Kovitz, whose sister had a radical mastectomy at age 44.
Doing make-up for family members attending B’nai Mitzvah and other simchas is part of the work that she finds satisfying, she says. And, as president of New Image by Leah, Inc. and IsraeliSkinCare.com, Kovitz continues to develop products and use unique treatments, such as a 2,000-year-old technique from the Middle East that removes upper-lip hair.
In 2003, Kovitz, who had divorced, married local real estate investor Charles Greenberg. Two years ago, her 21-year-old son Eric died tragically in a highway accident.
The ancient culture that is her heritage has beckoned since her son’s death. “I go to Israel more often. I need my family,” she says. In Israel, she says, there’s “always this welcoming party when you go to someone’s house. My mother would invite people she just met for dinner, sharing holidays.
“Here, as a member of the minority, I mix different people, not all Jews for the holidays. I want them to learn our traditions and to respect theirs,” she says, recalling how years ago, the Doucets would come to NATO headquarters to celebrate the Jewish holidays with her, and she would go to church on Christmas Eve with them.
Living in the United States, “I have a dual personality,” says Kovitz. “I’m an American in my heart and an Israeli in my heart.”