From Hair to Body Care, These Black-Owned Beauty Finds Deserve a Spot on Your Shelf
Updated: 3 days ago
EMERGING BRANDS
Thirteen emerging Black-owned brands, from the braiding hair that just made history at Target to a serum built on Ethiopian green coffee, chosen by BBF editors.
The brands that get the most attention in Black beauty are usually the ones that have already arrived. This list is about the ones still arriving. Most of these founders launched in the last three years, several are self-funded, and almost all of them spent this year walking into a Sephora, Ulta Beauty or Target meeting for the first time. We looked across the full shelf, from hair to skin to body, fragrance and makeup, and picked the brands with a real founder story, a real formula and a product worth starting with. Prices and retailers are as of October 2026.
Hair
Textured hair is where the most interesting new money in beauty is moving, and these four founders are proof. Two of them just made retail history in the same summer.
Soft Rows
Dr. Quani Burnett left physical therapy for prestige beauty, consulted for Briogeo and Kosas, and built the Beauty4BrownSkin following before launching Soft Rows in July 2025. The name is a blend of soft life and cornrows, and the formulas, built with cosmetic chemist AJ Addae, skip the heavy butters and oils that weigh down tighter curls. Burnett got into Sephora Accelerate in 2024 with a lab sample and a logo.
Start with: Velvet Slip 3-in-1 Hair Lotion, $30. Sold direct.
The Potion Studio
Aziza El Wanni started mixing hair products in her mother's kitchen in Suriname and sold her first batches at Los Angeles flea markets with no ad budget. Four years later the brand is bootstrapped, doubling revenue year over year, a Sephora Accelerate and Maesa Magic alum, and on shelves in 460 Ulta Beauty stores as of August. The multi-use formulas pull double duty; the shampoo also works as a body and beard wash.
Start with: Monoi Mango Moisturizer, $32. Sold at Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom and direct.
Ruka Hair
Tendai Moyo and Ugo Agbai built Ruka in London and in August became the first hair extensions brand Sephora has carried in more than twenty years. Their Synths 2 fiber is a patent-pending, collagen-based alternative to kanekalon that holds a curl and moves like natural hair without the itch. The company has raised about $10 million, including a round co-led by Henkel Ventures, the group behind Olaplex.
Start with: Synths 2 Braid-It, $34, or the Do-It-All Gel, $39. Sold at Sephora, Selfridges and direct.
SLAYYY Hair
Celebrity event designer Diann Valentine and her daughter Riann put $500,000 of their own savings into two years of research with braiders before launching SLAYYY in 2023. The pre-stretched braiding hair is treated to strip out the irritants linked to scalp burning, which matters more than ever after the 2025 Consumer Reports findings on synthetic hair. In 2026 it became the first Black-owned braiding hair brand stocked at Target.
Start with: SLAYYY pre-stretched braiding hair, $6.99 a pack. Sold at Target, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Black-owned beauty supply stores and direct.
Skin
Three face brands launched in the last eighteen months, each built around one idea done properly.
June Skin
Morgan Brown spent a decade as the YouTube creator ItsHeyMorgan, studied at Wharton, then spent three years in a lab before launching June Skin this year with a single product. The brand is named for June 2017, the month her father died suddenly, which turned skincare into a wellness practice for her. The cream is fragrance-free, vegan and built for sensitive skin.
Start with: The Essential Cream, $43. Sold direct.
In Real Life Skin
Alyssa Ashley, a first-generation Guyanese-American and publicist, launched IRL Skin in 2025 around Caribbean rituals like pomegranate facials and herbal steams, paired with ingredients meant to calm the nervous system as well as the skin. Judged by Fenty Skin and Urban Decay, IRL Skin was named a top five City of LA emerging brand in the 2025 Beauty and The Biz accelerator, and Essence made Timeless its Product of the Week.
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Start with: Timeless Hydrating Dew Gel-Cream, $32. Sold direct.
Kenatae
Yemi Yilma grew up in Ethiopia watching women use coffee and honey on their skin and hair. Kenatae, which means from my mother in Amharic, launched in January 2026 out of Alexandria, Virginia with a serum built on chlorogenic acid from green coffee, plus Manuka honey and ferulic acid. The masks use Ethiopian teff, which the brand says is a first in skincare.
Start with: Radiant Shield Green Coffee Antioxidant Complex, $125. Sold direct.
Body
Body care is the category every beauty retailer is chasing this year. These three are doing it with real formulation, not just a pretty bottle.
Brunel
Supermodel Jasmine Tookes named Brunel after the French word for brown and launched it in 2025 with body oils inspired by her grandmother's rituals. The Awakening lotion, her first, pairs vitamin C with a caffeine complex and niacinamide to brighten and de-puff, and it has picked up 2026 nods from Byrdie, People, Cosmopolitan and Elle.
Start with: Awakening Vital Radiance Body Lotion, $36. Sold direct.
Dealbodies
Krys Deal Lunardo grew up around pineapple farming and stone crabbing in the Bahamas and built Dealbodies on bush medicine and her grandmother's routines. The line is waterless body concentrates, three to four times stronger than standard body care, with a plant hydrosol base. Launched in 2024, self-funded, now a Sephora Accelerate 2026 brand and a BeautyMatter NEXT50 honoree.
Start with: Rest Stop Retinol Resurfacing Body Serum, $56. Sold at Urban Outfitters, Macy's and direct.
Blue Water Girls
Chelsea Pinky, Glynn Pogue and Sade Parham host the podcast Black Girls Texting, and in 2024 they turned a conversation about colorism and the tanning aisle into a brand. Named for a co-founder's Trinidadian mother, Blue Water Girls makes glow and tan products for melanin-rich skin, and in 2026 it was selected for Ulta Beauty's MUSE Accelerator.
Start with: Private Island Glow Serum, $40. Sold at Revolve, AMP Beauty LA, Amazon and direct.
Fragrance
Two independent houses with a point of view, one from a Queens home studio and one from Seattle.
The Alloy Studio
Bryson Ammons taught himself perfumery after a stint at Aesop, and with creative director Eddie Hodges releases every collection as a gold and silver pair in molten chrome bottles. Luster, the signature, is a sweet potato pie gourmand: burnt sugar, condensed milk and vanilla. Ammons went through about sixty iterations to get it right. Essence featured the brand on its WeLoveUs marketplace this spring.
Start with: Luster Eau de Parfum, from $15 for a 2 ml to $170 for 50 ml. Sold direct and on WeLoveUs.shop.
Vervazi
Timi Adeogun grew up wearing her father's fragrances and launched Vervazi in Seattle in 2024, pairing each scent with a written affirmation. Truth, the hero, is a unisex blend of bergamot, cardamom, leather, cedarwood and sandalwood composed by perfumer Lucas Sieuzac, built for eight-plus hours of wear. Byrdie named Vervazi one of the emerging Black-owned brands shaping the future this year.
Start with: Truth Eau de Parfum, $120, or the Discovery Trio. Sold direct, on Amazon and Shop With BET.
Makeup
One complexion brand built by a scientist for heat, humidity and deep skin tones.
TONAL Cosmetics
Christal Alert is a cosmetic scientist with a neuroscience degree from the University of Toronto and dual master's degrees from ISIPCA in Versailles. She launched TONAL in Barbados and formulates for the Caribbean climate, which means foundations that hold through heat and sweat. Sunveil comes in ten shades named for the region, from Shell to Mahogany, with Mauby, Rum and Cacao in between. TONAL was a 2025 Maesa Magic Incubator winner.
Start with: Sunveil SPF 50 Skin Defense Foundation, $64. Sold at Violet Grey and direct.
Know an emerging Black-owned beauty brand that belongs on this list? Send it to hello@blackbeautyfounders.org. Black Beauty Founders does not earn a commission from the links on this page.
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