African Owned Beauty Brands You Should Try

In the past Africans or the people of color found it difficult to get beauty products that had their skin color or hair texture in mind. This caused most Africans to either stay without any makeup at all or rely on their indigenous beauty products such as shea butter. African beauty is rich, decadent, natural, and grounded in ancestral knowledge and generational wealth. Through centuries of remedies, stories, and healing archetypes, the ingredients used to create these products are raw and molded from the royalty of the earth. Ingredients such as shea butter, argan oil, coconut oil, marula, and baobab oil are manifested from the soil, blended within a formula that celebrates a connected root, a life cycle, and a synergy of sorts. Currently, the beauty industry in Africa is growing with several makeup lines, skincare and hair products. Africans are also more confident in purchasing products made on the continent than before. Below, we are highlighted 6 African owned beauty brands you should try.

Juvia’s Place

Juvia’s place was established by Chichi Eburu from Nigeria in 2016. Her need to find makeup product that blended with her deep skin tone made her create Juvia. Furthermore, growing up in Nigeria, Eburu never saw black women featured prominently in beauty campaigns. Such exclusion only further exacerbated her feelings of inadequacy as an adult. She understood that the beauty industry was monolithic, and served to reinforce a standard of beauty that was propagated by racism and colonialism.

Malee

A passionate entrepreneur, Zeze Oriaikhi-Sao, founded one of the South Africa’s successful niche beauty brands in 2010, Malee. Malee is a luxury fragrance, bath and body care range inspired by generations of African healing rituals and time-honoured beauty traditions. This ancient wisdom has advocated the powerful healing properties of 100% pure plant-based ingredients sourced from nature itself. These traditions live on in Malee, with their efficacy proven by modern science.

Joanna K Cosmetics

Joanna K Cosmetics is a Kenyan based cosmetic line that was founded on 1st December 2018 by Joanna Kinuthia. Joanna Kinuthia is a Kenyan content creator and entrepreneur. She started off with a YouTube channel where she would do makeup tutorials before she decided to start Joanna K Cosmetics. Her realization that there were just not enough Kenyan owned makeup brands that were for Africans by Africans inspired her to create her cosmetics line.

Epara

Conceived from the Nigerian dialect of Ebira, Epara, which means to cocoon oneself, is a collection of handcrafted skincare products tailored to treating the skincare needs of women of color. The line consists of expertly crafted, scientifically proven products made with ingredients derived from African soils to repair, pamper, and nourish the skin.

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Marini Naturals

Marini Naturals is Africa’s first quality full haircare range for all natural hair. It is a Kenyan-owned haircare line founded by two friends; Michelle Ntalami and Niyati Patel, in 2012. It consists of products that condition and treat the hair with infused moisture leaving it soft, healthy and manageable for up to 72 hours on a minimum.

Evita Joseph

It is one of the African owned beauty brands with a unique focus on the woman of color, Evita Joseph have been researching, designing and producing world class beauty and makeup products for the woman of color. Evita Joseph originally originated from Ghana since 2015. The company still maintains their initial conviction that they can engineer beauty products that spur confidence enough for the woman of color to take up every stage and challenge.