Heather Taylor
#224,781 Most Popular
About
Content creator, mortuary makeup artist, and death care professional known online as Beforethecoffin. She uploads educational videos about mortuary work alongside horror, movie, and alternative travel content which she shares on TikTok with over 500,000 followers and on Instagram with over 170,000 followers.
Before fame
She began applying special effects makeup at a haunted house when she was 14 years old and continued working there for eight years. She studied special effects makeup before pursuing mortuary science and embalming at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. She launched Before the Coffin during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Trivia
She has been featured by Allure, BuzzFeed, HuffPost, LADbible, PopSugar, Business Insider, and Pittsburgh City Paper. Her mortuary school videos helped inspire the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science to introduce an online class.
Family life
Her father's death helped inspire her to pursue death care because she wanted to provide other families with closure. She has an older sister. She married Ian MacDonald at Turin Castle in Ireland in September 2025.
Associated with
She and Eileen Hollis both contributed their mortuary makeup expertise to a 2021 article published by Allure.
