Eileen Cecile Ford (née Otte; March 25, 1922 – July 9, 2014) was an American modeling agency executive.

Eileen Cecile Ottensoser[1] was born in Manhattan and raised in suburban Great Neck on Long Island, the only daughter of four children of Loretta Marie (née Laine) and Nathaniel Otte.

After only a year, Eileen and Jerry sold their car and relocated their agency to a third-floor walkup office on Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Dorian Leigh described Eileen as "one of the hardest working, most persistent persons I have ever known, two qualities which made her my very good friend for years and later, my unanticipated enemy".

[6] After two years, the Fords were competing seriously with the modeling industry's two leading agencies, those of Huntington Hartford and John Robert Powers.

Leigh called Eileen and told them that her 15-years younger sister, Suzy Parker, was making only $25 per hour working as a model for Huntington Hartford.

[6] Leigh felt Suzy, although only 16 years old, should be making $40 per hour, and told Ford she would join her two-year-old agency only if they took Parker sight-unseen.

Expecting a younger version of the raven-haired, blue-eyed, very slender, 5'4" Dorian, the Fords were shocked to see Parker was 5'10" with green eyes, and freckles.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the Fords represented top models Mary Jane Russell, Carmen Dell'Orefice, and Dovima.

To make sure that their models were the most successful, the Fords provided hair dressers, dermatologists, and Eileen dispensed diet advice constantly.

She allowed models to live with her to "keep a close eye on them so they'd stay out of trouble and make their early morning appointments".

[5] Eleven of Ford's busiest models were featured on the April 1955 issue of McCall's magazine, Parker, Leigh, Jean Patchett, Patsy Shally, Lillian Marcuson, Nan Rees, Leonie Vernet, Georgia Hamilton, Dolores Hawkins, Kathy Dennis, and Mary Jane Russell.

Their top models in the 1960s included Wilhelmina Cooper (who would go on to run a successful modeling agency of her own in the 1970s, until her death from lung cancer due to heavy smoking in 1980, at age 40), Jean Shrimpton, Ann Turkel, Agneta Frieberg, Ali MacGraw, Candice Bergen, Tilly Tizani, Sondra Peterson, and Donna Michelle.

[citation needed] In the 1970s, Stewart catered parties and weddings with Dorian Leigh, who became a cordon bleu level chef after retiring from the fashion industry.

It represented Jerry Hall, Christie Brinkley, Rene Russo, Kim Basinger, Janice Dickinson, Lauren Hutton, Karen Graham, Susan Blakely, and others.

In her Lifetime Intimate Portrait, Ford said they started that division with the aspiration of representing Brooke Shields, then nine-years-old.

Many top models at the time were harming their reputations with drug use, staying out all night at Studio 54, and not being sufficiently professional.

She appeared in the 1997 film Scratch the Surface about a teen model turned documentary cinematographer, Tara Fitzpatrick's examination of the clothing industry and in Intimate Portrait: Eileen Ford in 1999 and again in Celebrity Profile: Brooke Shields in 2001 and a profile of Christie Brinkley.