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Perhaps more than any other category, beauty has been democratised by the people who buy, wear and talk about the product. It also moves far faster than, say, fashion. The brand founders, executives, experts and leaders behind the scenes are the ones riding and steering the next wave of beauty — critically, by listening to the people who are most invested: the customers. This group of innovators represent the future face of beauty.
Founder | Black Skin Directory
Dija Ayodele, a founder, author and aesthetician, is a trailblazer and advocate for inclusivity and diversity within the beauty industry. Her platform, Black Skin Directory, is dedicated to connecting people of colour with skincare professionals, providing education and raising awareness around the specific needs of Black and multicultural skin. Since its inception in 2018, Ayodele has been awarded accolades by the British Association of Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology (BABTAC) and has won Aesthetic Awards for the platform’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. She has also launched a training platform to equip skincare professionals with enhanced medical knowledge and partnered with Glossier on its 2024 sun safety campaign.
Beyond her educational initiatives, Ayodele consults on product development and marketing campaigns, directing renowned brands like Dermalogica, La Roche-Posay, Shiseido and Lancôme on product efficacy for people of colour. She actively serves on advisory boards, including the British Beauty Council and the BABTAC.
Founder and CEO | The Center
Ben Bennett is building the next guard of beauty brands. In 2010, he founded incubator Hatchbeauty — a portfolio which spans Goldfaden MD, Dollar Shave Club and Lancer — with fellow investor Tracy Holland, before selling it to Lion Capital in 2019. Then, he established a new accelerator, The Center, through which he invested in Susan Yara’s popular skincare brand Naturium before it was acquired by Elf Cosmetics for $355 million in 2023. Other brands in its roster include Chriselle Lim’s Phlur and bodycare and haircare brand Saltair, which now reports millions in revenue. His most recent investment was Cyklar, the buzzy bodycare brand founded by American YouTuber Claudia Sulewski. Bennett’s passion lies in identifying and accelerating brands that are not only innovative but also deeply connected with their target audiences.
Founder | Gamine
Melanie Dir, known online as @Maison.Dir, is celebrated as one of the most innovative creative visionaries in the beauty industry — thanks to her conceptual product and marketing ideas. Kicking off her career in traditional marketing teams for L’Oréal, Coty and Laura Mercier, Dir has gone on to disrupt beauty boundaries. Her impressive portfolio includes clients Off-White, Pat McGrath Labs, Isamaya Beauty and Simihaze Beauty, where she has been central to the brands’ artistic flair and technical product creations. Her next move transitions from guiding brands to rebuilding her own with the relaunch of Gamine, the fragrance brand she originally founded in 2016, which she plans to re-release in SS25.
Founder and CEO | Future Beauty Labs
Marc Elrick is the man behind Byoma, one of the biggest breakout beauty startups of the past two years. Alongside this, Elrick is the founder and CEO of incubator Future Beauty Labs, which includes Tan-Luxe and Isle of Paradise. The incubator focuses on efficacy and education while maintaining accessibility, emphasising science-driven formulas that are clinically and dermatologist-approved and cost-effective. Two years in, Byoma is available in 12 mass retailers across the UK, the US, Canada, Europe and the UAE. It has garnered over 591.5 million product reviews on TikTok and is on track to achieve $300 million to $500 million in retail sales by 2025. This rapid growth is a testament to Elrick’s leadership and the brand’s unique selling points, including ingredient decoding on packaging and collaborations with ‘skinfluencers’ and ‘dermfluencers’ to build consumer trust. Now, Elrick is focused on advancing formulas within his clinical lab and building out a skin analysis app in collaboration with AI firm Revieve.
Biomimetism expert and neuropharmacologist and skin biology expert
When Prada set out to enter beauty with a focus on technology-augmented skin formulas, licensor L’Oréal Group onboarded Dr Guillian Graves and Dr Lionel Breton as experts to lead the launch. Graves’s broader work involves academic research focused on biomimicry (mimicking the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges) with institutions such as École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, while Breton has previously served as scientific director at L’Oréal, overseeing its dermatology and cosmetic science. The duo formulated the ‘Adapto.gn’ smart technology present in Prada Beauty’s skincare and makeup lines. The technology works in sync with consumers’ complexions and only triggers an active response when exposed to environmental changes to calm skin sensitivity. Their work has not only given Prada a clear USP in a crowded market but has also advanced skin health and skin longevity in the wider industry.
Founder | Made by Mitchell
Mitchell Halliday is a makeup artist and founder of British cosmetics brand Made by Mitchell, which he launched in 2020. However, it wasn’t until Halliday pivoted all marketing, sales and community efforts exclusively to TikTok and TikTok Shop in 2022 that it grew into a million-pound business. Made by Mitchell became the first UK brand on TikTok Shop to generate $2 million in one week and make $1 million in sales during a 12-hour TikTok Shop live event. With a diverse array of content, Halliday has placed himself at the centre of daily TikTok lives, packaging orders, building mystery boxes, conducting makeup tutorials, hosting pop-up ‘Mitchell Mart’ experiences touring the UK, and creating community-centric videos that have built a robust following in the hundreds of thousands. His thinking challenged the traditional direct-to-consumer model followed by many indie brands, and Made by Mitchell is now sold in retail stores nationwide, including Boots and Harrods.
Global head of botanical research | Davines Group
Dr Simon Jackson is a British pharmacognosist and one of the last specialists in his field — the study of medicine from natural sources. Davines Group, which owns the skincare and haircare brands Comfort Zone and Davines and is dedicated to regenerative farming, appointed Jackson as global head of botanical research in 2021. In this role, he leads the brand’s scientific ‘garden’: an open-air lab dedicated to harvesting sustainable ingredients, where he is cultivating over 500 ingredient species. Products created under his guidance include Comfort Zone’s Sublime Skin Serum as well as Davines’s Microbiotic Booster, and the We Stand For Beauty Solid Hair and Body Shampoo Bar. The latter is the first product from Jackson and his team to feature regenerative ingredients that are grown, harvested, extracted and formulated into a waterless and more sustainable product — paving the way for others in the industry to follow suit.
Co-founder | To Summer
In February 2024, L’Oréal announced investment in fragrance brand To Summer (or 观夏 in Chinese) through its China investment arm Shanghai Meicifang Investment, and with support from its venture capital fund Bold. Shanghai Meicifang was set up in 2022 with a mission to “empower the Chinese innovation ecosystem”. The investment followed a minority stake in Documents, a perfume contemporary of To Summer, two years earlier.
This decade, China’s fragrance industry is emerging as a lucrative bright spot given its low market penetration. Former media expert Shen Li was quick to spot an opportunity. In 2018, Li and Huipu Liu founded To Summer in Beijing in hopes of creating a slow lifestyle brand built on Eastern culture, art and scent. To Summer now has long lines of customers drawn to their experiential stores where sensory experiences are triggered by aromas like ink painting and Chinese tea.
Co-founders | Uncover
The African beauty market is a billion-dollar industry, yet it’s difficult for both international and local brands to scale in the continent due to underdeveloped infrastructures and market fragmentation across its 50 countries. Sneha Mehta and Jade Oyateru have demonstrated it is possible with their skincare company Uncover. Launched in 2020, during the pandemic, Uncover set out to innovate by creating products that blend African botanicals with K-beauty skincare technology. In 2022, Uncover received $1 million in seed funding, and in July 2024, the founders raised an additional $1.4 million, led by investors EQ2 Ventures, IgniteXL Ventures, Chui Ventures, Samata Capital and Altree Capital. The brand opened its first store in Lagos in February, now operating across both Kenya and Nigeria. Next for Mehta and Oyateru is unveiling Uncover’s Licorice Root Dark Spot Serum, targeting hyperpigmentation and launching in the US and Canada.
Co-founder and CEO | 456 Skin
Turning down roles at globally established skincare science labs to develop your own and launch a skincare brand might be bold, but Noelly Michoux, co-founder and CEO of 456 Skin, has achieved what many thought impossible. Raising €2.2 million in seed funding, Michoux pioneered the world’s first Skin Tone Research Lab, dedicated to testing, developing and manufacturing products tailored to the physiological structure of brown and black skin tones. She revolutionised the clinical testing system, which historically tested skincare products on only one skin type. With her team of founding dermatologists and derm-pharmacists, Michoux launched 456 Skin, a skincare brand that addresses primary skin concerns for darker skin, including hyperpigmentation, dehydration and acne. The brand will be stocked by Harvey Nichols from October.
CMO | Merit
Aila Morin has been the chief marketing officer for minimalist makeup brand Merit since 2023, following three instrumental years as senior vice president in charge of product, growth and innovation. At a time when the makeup industry was focused on bold and highly pigmented hues and a fast-paced and persistent cycle of newness, Morin adopted a slower approach. Her product-development strategy has helped the brand reach over $100 million in sales, and she has spearheaded cross-market partnerships with fashion brands, including Proenza Schouler and Tove. This strategy enables Merit to secure new audiences without relying on a continuous stream of launches. Creating a calmer and simplified philosophy for marketing and product development, Morin thinks outside of the traditional beauty model that has existed for years.
SVP of new incubations ventures | The Estée Lauder Companies
Shana Randhava has a front row seat to the next generation of emerging beauty brands, ideas and concepts. If you mine her mind for information, you’ll find that the future of beauty is diverse, new-market oriented and goes beyond product, to storytelling, science and creative breakthroughs, as well as community. The beauty executive previously ran ELC’s New Business Development vertical, successfully shaping and executing the conglomerate’s M&A strategy for buzzy brands like Deciem, Dr Jart+, Forest Essentials, Kilian and Too Faced.
In her new role as head of New Incubation Ventures (NIV), Randhava leads the strategy for the company’s early-stage investment and incubation in emerging beauty concepts and brands. At the heart of it all is establishing the portfolio company as the leader in global beauty innovation. To that end, since starting four years ago, NIV has concluded investment in 10 global brands, including C-beauty favourites Melt Season and Code Mint, community-based label Kiki World, and Vyrao and Haeckels, handpicked by NIV from over 3,100 brands.
How do they find their pick? By casting their net far and wide. To aid the initiatives, Randhava and her team launched global beauty programmes such as Beauty&You (a grant programme to discover India-focused entrepreneurs and creators with a fresh take) and The Catalysts, a global initiative in partnership with TikTok to spotlight emerging storytellers in the beauty industry.
Next up? A massive self-sustaining masterclass library offering access to key insights from founders and industry experts.
President and chief brand officer | Rhode
Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand, Rhode, has made waves in the industry since its 2022 launch. While Bieber’s influence online and in real life is undeniable, it is Lauren Ratner, president and chief brand officer, who has been pivotal in scaling the brand. Tapping into her experience from stints at Michael Kors and Reformation, Ratner has built an impactful marketing machine at Rhode that diverges from conventional influencer marketing and broader advertising strategies. Notably the implementation of a seductive waitlist marketing model (400,000 people signed up for Rhode’s Peptide Lip Tint ahead of its launch). She also spearheaded a collaboration with Krispy Kreme and orchestrated pop-up activations at Coachella, New York and London. Additionally, Ratner steered the creation of the first-ever iPhone case that crossed lifestyle and beauty by featuring a built-in pocket for lip gloss, resulting in broader brand visibility and increased user-generated content.
Co-founder | The Black Beauty Club
Launched during the pandemic by Tomi Talabi and Asmeret Berhe-Lumax, The Black Beauty Club’s mission is “to champion innovative solutions that address social and economic gaps within the beauty industry”. It has successfully transitioned away from the now-defunct social media platform Clubhouse to become a series of in-person events held in cities including London and Paris. Talabi, who now runs the beauty club independently, hosts the events, which cover everything from Black beauty and classism to the power of ancient ingredients. Featuring industry leaders such as Cyndia Harvey, founder of This Hair of Mine, and London-based hairdresser Charlotte Mensah, the events draw in audiences eager to dissect today’s beauty market. Its cult-like community has caught the industry’s attention, and The Black Beauty Club has collaborated with leading names such as Nars Cosmetics as well as popular emerging brands Topicals and Glossier, which have provided resources such as event space and products.
VP of global brand marketing | Fenty Beauty
Entering a crowded beauty market and disrupting the status quo is no easy feat, but in 2017, Fenty Beauty did just that with its groundbreaking launch of 40 (now 50) foundation shades, setting a new standard for diversity in makeup. Since then, the brand has become a mainstay, excelling in experiential marketing, inclusive messaging and playful product branding. Much of this recent success is accredited to Nanette Wong, VP of global brand marketing, who joined Fenty Beauty in 2017 and rose through the marketing ranks.
Under Wong’s direction, the company has launched viral community challenges on TikTok, and debuted the first shade-matching filter on the platform. Her innovative marketing strategies, such as product integration in 2023’s Savage x Fenty show (streamed to over 200 million Amazon Prime members) and kitting out the 600 Olympic medal volunteers with Fenty makeup during Paris 2024, have continued to resonate with new audiences. Wong’s expertise in leveraging social media and influencer partnerships has significantly boosted Fenty Beauty’s visibility and global consumer engagement.
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