What it does
Preservatives are not optional in water-containing cosmetics — without them you are applying a bacterial culture to your face. Phenoxyethanol is one of the most common, and it is capped at 1% in most regulatory regimes.
At those levels it is considered safe. A small number of people find it mildly irritating, and it is a frequent flag on ingredient-checking apps, which gives it a worse reputation than the evidence supports.
If a product genuinely irritates you and phenoxyethanol is the only unusual thing in it, it is a reasonable suspect. Otherwise it is not the ingredient worth worrying about.
