Tucked into a quiet second-floor space in Brentwood Village, LA Skin Retreat by Lena feels like a welcome pause. Sunlight filters through the windows, the rooms are calm and intentional, and owner Lena Berghoudian moves with the steady confidence of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. Her approach is intuitive rather than rigid, deeply personal rather than prescriptive. “I don’t follow protocols,” says Berghoudian, who offers everything from customized facials and oxygen treatments to microchanneling, threading and full-body waxing. “Every face is different. Every person is different. Sometimes I decide during the treatment what the skin actually needs.”
That instinct is what has kept clients following Berghoudian for years. Before Brentwood, she spent more than a decade becoming one of the most sought-after estheticians in the Pacific Palisades, first building her devoted clientele at Fahi’s Skin and Wax Bar on Sunset Boulevard just steps from what would later become Palisades Village. There, Berghoudian quietly became indispensable. Clients returned every few weeks, often arranging their schedules around hers. “People trusted me completely,” she says.
In 2022, Berghoudian took the leap and opened her own jewel-box studio on Via de la Paz, with the help of her husband, who handled the renovation. Nearly all of her clients followed. The space became exactly what her work had always been—a refuge. “I never look at this as a job,” says the mother of two. “When I’m working, I don’t feel tired at all. This is my happy place.”
Then, in a matter of hours, everything was gone.
The Palisades Fire destroyed Berghoudian’s studio completely—machines, tools, inventory and years of work reduced to ash. The loss was devastating, but not unfamiliar. “When it happened, I thought, ‘I’ve done this before,’” she says.
Her first new beginning came in 2011, when war broke out in Syria and her family was forced to leave the life they had built there. Just months after arriving in Los Angeles, her father tragically passed away at only 60 years-old. “All of a sudden, we lost everything,” she says. “Financial support, stability—everything.”
At 21, Berghoudian chose the safest path forward, training as a medical assistant and phlebotomist. “It was stable,” she says. “But there was no space to grow. And it wasn’t something I loved.”
The pivot came unexpectedly when a nurse mentioned getting her eyebrows done. Berghoudian responded instinctively, “I can do that for you.” The nurse stopped her. “What are you doing here?”
“Beauty was my passion from day one,” Berghoudian says. “I always had brushes, masks and products at home. It was just who I was.”
She enrolled in beauty school, earned her state board license and trained through the Dermalogica Institute. In 2013, she began working at Fahi’s Skin and Wax Bar, where she met owner Fahimeh Rafiei, who became her mentor and second family. “Every single step in my life, wherever I am now, it’s because of Fahi,” Berghoudian says.
When Rafiei was diagnosed with cancer and sought treatment in London, Berghoudian stayed behind to keep the business running. “I was running everything,” she says. “Six days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day. I wanted to keep it going for her.” Rafiei sadly passed away in 2022 at 57, a loss Berghoudian describes as devastating. An attempt to take over the business fell apart, and two weeks before Thanksgiving, with a full book and no safety net, she walked away.
Within weeks, supported by a loyal client and her husband, Berghoudian opened her own Palisades studio. Nearly every client followed. “That was the first time it was really mine,” she says. “I built it with my hands.”
Then came the fire. “It started like a normal day,” Berghoudian recalls. “I had six facials booked.” By the next morning, the studio was gone. Insurance covered liability, not contents. “That’s not even one machine,” she says.
What replaced the loss wasn’t money—it was community. Clients who had lost their own homes asked how they could help her. One bought her a massage bed. Others invited her to visit them at their hotels and temporary homes so she could keep working. “I just kept going,” she says.
Late one night, her 15-year-old son asked, ‘“Mom, are we going to be okay?’ That question woke me up,” she says. “I told him, ‘Look at my hands. Wherever I go, they go with me. We will be more than okay.’”
With a little bit of luck, and a lot of persistence, Berghoudian found her new space in Brentwood Village. “It reminded me of the Palisades,” she says. “A little town. Warm. Community.” With her husband once again handling the build-out, she opened her Brentwood studio on March 7, just two months after the fires began.
Today, the studio features three treatment rooms, an inviting outdoor area and a curated retail wall carrying esteemed brands such as Dermalogica, Guinot and Intraceuticals, alongside her own self-formulated eyebrow serums, powders and gels. Longtime Palisades clients travel from across Southern California, while new Brentwood regulars discover her daily.
The Palisades will always be part of Berghoudian’s story, and she hopes to return one day, perhaps running two studios—one alongside her daughter, now in nursing school. For now, Brentwood is where she is writing her next chapter. “You can lose everything,” she says. “But if you love what you do—and you do it with honesty—you can always begin anew.”
LA Skin Retreat by Lena
179 S. Barrington Pl., Office B
310-310-3376
lenasskinretreat.com