African Body Care Is Not a Trend

Long before slugging became en vogue, I remember my mother rubbing copious amounts of shea butter on my face before school (not to toot my own horn, but I was the original glazed donut in second grade). 

Today, African beauty products like body butters and nutrient-dense oils are gaining a stronger foothold in the beauty industry. While this shift has been refreshing, it also reflects a larger conversation about cultural appropriation. Without visibility, representation, and proper investment, we risk A-beauty becoming a fad rather than an established pillar of cosmetic innovation. 

“We grew up knowing these ingredients and hearing about them, and in some ways becoming a trend helps popularize them,” Sabrina Elba, co-founder of S’able Labs, tells us. “I think it’s really important that brands like ours continue to share their stories, where they’re from, and make sure that the cultural equity and identity is attached to these ingredients as they move through the wellness world.”

Read on to learn more about the traditions behind the trends from A-beauty brand founders. 

The Roots of African Body Care

Today, you can’t shop for body care products without seeing ingredients like shea butter, baobab oil, argan oil, and more listed on the product label. While many of these botanicals have become buzzwords, they have been central to various African cultures throughout history. 

Christina Funke Tegbe, the Nigerian-American founder of 54 Thrones, was inspired to launch her brand after traveling across Africa and learning about different beauty ingredients from the communities in Ghana, Egypt, Morocco, and beyond that had been keeping these traditions alive for centuries. “If I wanted to know how to do anything pertaining to shea butter, black soap, [and] argan oil, I was there with the masters,” Funke-Tegbe says of her experience. “I was there for the women whose grandmothers and great-grandmothers taught them how to do this.” 

Many of Africa’s native botanicals have antioxidant-rich, deeply moisturizing properties because they evolved in harsh climates. For generations, communities across Africa have used these ingredients for a range of functions, including antimicrobial benefits, moisture, and sun protection.

Abena Boamah-Acheampong, Ghanaian-American founder of Hanahana Beauty, says shea butter (called nkuto in Twi) is a powerful multipurpose ingredient in Tamale, a region in northern Ghana where her company sources its materials. “Shea is an ingredient that is used up north to help with sun protection,” Boamah-Acheampong explains. “For me, I use sunscreen, but we still want a moisturizing element. We want something that glows.”

Elba tells us that observing her Somali mother’s at-home beauty routine, using native resources, inspired S’able Labs’ products. “Somali ingredients have been in my life as long as I can remember, and something like our Qasil face mask… it’s literally my mom in a bottle because the turmeric, black seed, and qasil are things that she would mix together.” 

According to A-beauty brand founders like Funke Tegbe, Elba, and Boamah-Acheampong, African body care is driven by innovation, but it is also firmly rooted in intention, rituals, and heritage. Ingredients like shea butter and marula oil are not buzzwords; they are nature’s remedies, skillfully produced by Africans, and applied to the body with centuries of care layered in each touch. 

“Some of these beauty rituals, particularly when we’re talking about African beauty rituals, have been passed down by word of mouth. So we have to keep that going, and by codifying that and really showing the history, it helps keep that alive,” Tegbe says.

How African Body Care Is Shaping the Market

Many of today’s consumers crave targeted skincare solutions centered around moisture and barrier repair. A-beauty brands have answered the call. Over the last few years, A-beauty has established itself as a fast-growing market, with retailers like Sephora and Ulta Beauty supporting the category. While some founders credit the surge in A-beauty’s widespread recognition to social media, they believe there is still a disconnect between consumers and African producers. “Education is a lot more democratized now because of things like TikTok and social media, so people have more of an awareness of where these ingredients come from,” Elba says. “But I do still feel [that] regardless of the shift, there is an erasure of some of these ingredients, particularly when it comes to their stories and the people that farm them.”

For A-beauty founders, part of their mission is maintaining reverence for the continent’s culture. “African beauty is creating products intentionally, [and] thinking through the process of traditional African beauty standards,” Boamah-Acheampong tells us. 

These founders are also adamant about pushing A-beauty forward by pairing the wisdom of African beauty traditions with sophisticated scientific innovation. Elba tells us that S’able’s patented Hyperprevent technology, for example, combines age-old knowledge with science-backed ingredients to target hyperpigmentation. “It’s really important to be able to have that science alongside the culture, alongside the natural ingredients to really make for well-rounded formulations.”

That tradition-meets-next-generation approach is also helping A-beauty shape the broader market. Rather than treating Black skin as an afterthought, these brands are developing research-driven formulas around specific concerns—and demonstrating that products formulated with Black skin in mind can ultimately deliver for a much wider range of consumers. “Of course, Black skin is the hardest to treat when it comes to hyperpigmentation, which is why we centered our testing [and] formulations around Black skin,” Elba explains. “So we know we have a technically better product, a product that’s going to work on everyone else because it works for Black skin.”

How A-Beauty Brands Center Community

As global demand for African botanicals grows, African-founded brands like Hanahana Beauty, 54 Thrones, S’able Labs, and more are redefining body care by centering the communities that have cultivated these ingredients for generations. In an industry that can often feel wasteful and extractive, these brands are taking a more intentional approach—building direct relationships with African suppliers and investing in sustainability and social impact.

Hanahana’s Circle of Care works with Ghanaian women in the shea butter supply chain to invest in economic equity and healthcare. Boamah-Acheampong says it’s important to work “in tandem” with African communities, who have historically experienced labor extraction with too little credit. “How do we create access for the people that are also already creating access for us?” is the question Boamah-Acheampong set out to answer when launching Circle of Care.

Elba, who is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, embraces the same ideology for S’able Labs’ supply chain. “What I didn’t want to do was create a brand that then took advantage of smallholder farmers, didn’t pay fair wages, [and] had unsafe working conditions that involved child labor,” she tells us. Like many other A-beauty brand founders, Elba’s goal is to “share their faces and their stories upfront that gave them the identity behind these ingredients.” 

Innovation Without Investment

In today’s global beauty industry, African ingredients are gaining prominence faster than African brands. This imbalance reflects a larger issue: the beauty industry has embraced African ingredients without returning visibility and funding to the brands bringing these traditions to market. “Black brands get less funding,” Elba says. “Black women get the lowest amount of funding overall. So that means a lot of times these brands don’t have the marketing budgets of the big brands. I think coming together is going to be the best thing that we can do.” 

Limited access to capital makes it increasingly challenging for A-beauty brands to gain visibility, scale their businesses, and compete with larger brands. According to Vogue Business, Black-owned beauty brands raised $16 million in 2024, accounting for only 5% of the total U.S. beauty industry funding. Meanwhile, African botanicals are widely used in products from well-funded beauty companies, creating barriers for A-beauty brands to receive credit and visibility compared to established beauty powerhouses and well-funded regional categories, like the K-beauty market. 

“It’s very hard because I’m a Black woman in the beauty space that is building an intentional brand of impact,” Boamah-Acheampong tells us. “Even though all those things look like something that someone would want to invest in, people are waiting for you to do something to their standard.” 

The founders we spoke to agree there is a need for the A-beauty market to come together and acknowledge the value of African entrepreneurship. In a global industry that marginalizes A-beauty, founders like Boamah-Acheampong, Funke Tegbe, and Elba say that prioritizing cross-brand partnerships and unity will build a steady foundation for overlooked brands. “It’s up to founders and investors to really see their value in what Africa produces when it comes to beauty,” Funke Tegbe says.

The Future of A-Beauty Body Care Is Global

A-beauty founders say that history and innovation are not mutually exclusive. They aim to continue creating products and shaping communities that honor where it all began—all while working collectively to bolster staying power and address investment gaps. “What I’m excited about is the freedom to create things that maybe don’t fit the status quo of being rooted in A-Beauty,” Funke Tegbe tells us. “I’m excited about seeing the creativity, the innovation, the new products, [and] the new brands. I’m a consumer as much as I’m a founder, so I’m very optimistic about it all.” 

As someone who grew up on raw shea butter and black soap shipped from my relatives in Ghana, I’m excited to see cultural beauty staples transform to meet the growing demand for innovative products, like lightweight body creams and gentle exfoliants made from ingredients that sound like home.

Elba tells us that ensuring success in A-beauty’s future requires more than innovative formulations; it depends on collaboration across the category. “Having a network and building upon that and coming together is a great way to not only support founders, but also just support the entire industry as a whole.” 

One way A-beauty founders are strengthening the longevity of the category is through community-first initiatives. Funke Tegbe is expanding this vision beyond products with her Out of Office Social Wellness Club in Houston, a space designed to recognize people of African descent who she says are often excluded from mainstream conversations surrounding beauty and wellness. “Wellness never was beige. Every wellness trend has an origin. Every origin has a community,” Funke Tegbe captioned an Instagram post for Out of Office. 

Ultimately, founders say that consistency is the key to rising above social media trends and cultural erasure. “It’s not just about applauding these brands and supporting them when they’re launching,” Elba says. “Don’t forget about the brands that you supported at launch. Don’t forget about that product that you got from a Black founder at a trade show. Consistent visibility is everything for a brand.”