March 7, 2025
Shop These 10 Beauty Brands Owned By Black Women
It’s time to fortify the BUY BLACK initiative
For Women’s History Month, BLACK ENTERPRISE is highlighting a bevy of Black woman-owned businesses in an effort to amplify their brands and fortify a BUY BLACK initiative. Now that major corporations and big box brands are rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion and changing their tune around the support of minority businesses, it’s only right we lean in. These female entrepreneurs are not only changing beauty standards but also establishing economic roots and representation. Through their success, we recognize the resilience, creativity, and influence of Black women in the beauty space. Here are 10 Black woman-owned beauty brands to get us started.
The Lip Bar
The Lip Bar was established in 2012. Melissa Butler had the courage to challenge the beauty industry’s standards. A former Wall Street analyst, she left the corporate world to make daring, vegan lipsticks from her Brooklyn kitchen. After being rejected on Shark Tank, Butler turned the setback on its head and rebranded The Lip Bar to TLB, a celebrated beauty brand offering affordable, inclusive, and high-performance products.
Black Girl SunScreen
In 2016, Shontay Lundy started Black Girl Sunscreen, a 30 SPF lotion for women of color. It is a product that was created due to the owner’s frustration with the existing sunscreens that could leave a white residue on Black skin. Lundy created a formula that is fully absorbed and protects melanin without leaving any visible cast. Since it launched, the brand has blown up in popularity and is now sold at major retailers like Ulta. Black Girl Sunscreen has an ever-expanding global presence, all while educating consumers on sun safety and empowering people of color to care for their skin.
The Honey Pot
Beatrice Dixon founded the Honey Pot Company after she had battled with bacterial vaginosis for eight months and had a life-changing vision in a dream. In 2014, she created a plant-based feminine hygiene line to provide a better, chemical-free option for people, different than the current options available. Dixon, who has a background in pharmaceuticals, retail, and natural foods, grew the brand to include a full range of feminine products. The Honey Pot Company has expanded to major retailers since being established. Dixon has been recognized for her accomplishments; she has been named an Entrepreneur Top 100 award winner for 2019 and has won several industry awards.
Fenty
In 2017, after noticing that there was a gap in the beauty industry, despite her having collaborated with top brands, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty. She noticed that a lot of products didn’t cater to all skin tones, skin types, or hair textures, and she had to correct that. Fenty Beauty became a global sensation after quickly making waves with its high-performance formulas and an inclusive range of shades. Today, the brand remains a trendsetter and a leader in the beauty industry. It keeps on building up its loyal fan base based on the principles of inclusivity and product quality.
Ami Cole
Ami Colé was founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye in 2020, and she started the brand because she also realized that there was a need for beauty products for melanin-rich skin. Having a background in the beauty industry, Cole felt it was time to create a brand that could fill this gap. Harlem-located, Ami Colé is a skin-loving formulas developer that encourages people to own their true beauty and, thus, have a more connected experience with themselves and their excellence, all while being inspired by Senegal.
Golde
Golde was launched in 2017 by Trinity Mouzon Wofford and her partner, Issey. Golde was launched from a Brooklyn apartment with their first product, the Original Turmeric Latte Blend. Since then, the brand has expanded to include a skincare line that uses the goodness of superfoods to enrich and restore the skin. Made with natural, vegan ingredients, Golde’s skincare products are easy to incorporate into everyday routines for a simple yet effective approach to self-care. The brand focuses on clean, recognizable ingredients, making wellness accessible and enjoyable so users can feel their best and achieve healthy, glowing skin with Golde.
LYS Beauty
A Black-owned clean cosmetics brand launched in 2021 by Tisha Thompson, a seasoned beauty industry expert, LYS Beauty is an inclusive, self-love, and high-performance beauty brand. Sephora Clean-certified, LYS, was launched to help fill the gap in clean beauty and provides all skin tones, types, and budgets with skincare-infused formulas. The brand’s products are vegan, cruelty-free, and free from harsh ingredients like talc, fragrance, and mineral oil. LYS Beauty, with an empowerment, accessibility, and sustainability focus, encourages self-expression and embraces the concept that makeup should bring out the best in your natural beauty, not conceal it.
Briogeo
In 2013, her mother, a chemist and doctor, Dr. Rebecca Twine, helped Nancy Twine launch Briogeo, a clean, botanical-based hair care brand founded on her childhood memories of creating homemade beauty treatments with her mother. Nancy worked in finance and felt the need to create a brand that offers natural ingredients with scientific innovation for all hair types and textures after having lost her mother unexpectedly. More than a decade later, Briogeo is still dedicated to advancing clean hair care and is still developing new formulas to support healthier, more confident hair. It continues to grow.
Bread Beauty Supply
Created by Maeva Heim in 2020, BREAD Beauty Supply was born to make hair care for textured hair simple with clean, effective, and easy-to-use essentials. Maeva was brought up in her mother’s braiding salon in Perth, Australia. Still, she eventually realized that the industry did not provide easy-to-use, all-inclusive products for curls, coils, and braids. BREAD provides high-performance, no-fuss formulas to help you style and do wash day with ease. Expanding rapidly, the brand is available at Sephora, Ulta, Boots, SpaceNK, Selfridges, and Amazon, with over 40 beauty awards.
Pattern
PATTERN Beauty was founded by Tracee Ellis Ross in 2019 with the vision to celebrate and support the curliest, coolest, tightest hair textures. PATTERN is a Black-owned and Black-founded brand committed to uplifting Black beauty and joy through its products, messaging, and community to enable wearers to embrace their natural hair. PATTERN was founded to empower natural hair. PATTERN wants Blackness to be honored and valued and imagines a world for every curl, coil, and kink to thrive.
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