Jasmine Browley on Beauty, Power, and Writing Without Permission

Before the titles and bylines, Jasmine Browley describes herself as a deeply curious Black woman—one who has always been fascinated by success and what it looks like on Black people. That curiosity, she says, eventually revealed itself through storytelling, and formally evolved into a career spanning journalism and strategic communications.

Her relationship with beauty didn’t begin in newsrooms or brand launches. It began in everyday Black spaces—kitchens, beauty supply stores, aunties’ purses, salon chairs, church bathrooms. Beauty, for her, was never abstract. It was lived. Observed. Passed down.

Jasmine didn’t enter journalism through a traditional or linear path. Unable to afford relocating to New York to chase editorial opportunities like many of her peers, she stayed in Chicago, working in PR. While pitching a client to ESSENCE, she added one bold line at the end of the email—asking if she could also write a story on a completely different topic. She had dreamed, prayed, and quietly manifested writing for the publication, and decided it was time to shoot her shot.

That single ask led to a freelance contract. The contract led to a role as Business Editor. And somewhere along the way, Jasmine realized she was most alive when writing at the intersection of beauty, identity, power, and visibility.

“Beauty felt like an entry point into much bigger conversations,” she explains. Conversations about who gets seen, who gets centered, and whose stories are considered worthy of nuance.

Her voice was shaped early by watching Black women create beauty out of very little—mixing products, passing down techniques, innovating long before “clean beauty” or “inclusive shade ranges” became industry buzzwords. Some of her most vivid memories come from childhood moments spent in hair salons with her mother, flipping through Hype Hair and Black Sophisticate, absorbing how Black women’s stories were told through hair, care, and creativity.

Professionally, being one of the few Black women in many editorial spaces forced clarity. Jasmine learned that if she didn’t name what she saw, it wouldn’t be named at all. That realization sharpened her voice—direct, culturally grounded, and unafraid to push past surface-level storytelling.

Her perspective fully crystallized when she stopped translating Black beauty for a presumed white gaze and began writing as if Black women were the primary audience—because they are. Once she centered Black women without apology, her work became more confident, more resonant, and more impactful.

Today, what excites Jasmine most about beauty is watching Black founders build culturally specific brands—brands that world-build, tell scent stories, honor rituals, reference ancestry, and reflect regional identity. She’s also drawn to the intentional blurring of beauty, wellness, and lifestyle, and to storytelling that slows down: deeper founder narratives, ingredient transparency, and honest conversations about aging, rest, and care.

Looking ahead, her hopes for the industry are clear: fund Black brands properly, hire Black editors, chemists, creatives, and executives with real decision-making power, tell aging Black women’s stories with reverence, and stop treating diversity as a moment instead of infrastructure.

At its core, Jasmine believes Black beauty is inheritance. Innovation born from necessity. Texture, depth, contradiction, softness, edge, and endless reinvention. “Black beauty has, and will always be, the blueprint,” she says.

And perhaps the greatest lesson the industry has taught her? That her voice doesn’t need permission to be heard—and never did.

Rapid Fire with Jasmine Browley

When we asked Jasmine to move a little faster, here’s what she shared:

Black-owned beauty brands she can’t live without:

Topicals, Glam Body, Danessa Myricks Beauty, and Pat McGrath Beauty.

A Black-owned brand more people should be paying attention to:

Orena Fragrances.

Her current beauty routine:

Extremely simple. Cleanse, SPF (Fenty’s tinted moisturizer), and lots of water.

A beauty focus she swears by right now:

Moisture. Oil-infused body wash, thick lotion, oil, raw shea butter—and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

What Black beauty means to her:

Inheritance. Innovation. And the blueprint for everything that followed.

Jasmine Browley’s work reminds us that beauty journalism, at its best, is cultural documentation. It’s memory. It’s power. And it’s permission to tell the truth without softening the edges.

Her voice continues to shape how beauty is seen, written about, and understood—especially when Black women are centered as the audience, not the footnote.

Follow Jasmine Browley for more of her writing, cultural insight, and perspective on beauty, identity, and power:

@jasminebrowley