Black owned makeup brands have been taking the beauty world by storm. They inject much-needed color into the boardroom and our beauty kits.
It’s one thing to acknowledge their existence, and another thing to make space for them in your vanity.
So here are the tried and tested black owned makeup brands makeup worth a swatch.
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Black Owned Beauty Brands We’re Excited About
1. Pat McGrath Labs (Black Owned Makeup Brand With an Award Winning Boss)
Queen Elizabeth II dubbed Pat McGrath as Member of the Order of the British Empire. She’s that kind of boss.
Led by the queen of color and makeup artistry herself, Pat McGrath built Pat McGrath Labs in 2015. Before she started her eponymous brand, she breathed life and vision to today’s leading luxury cosmetic brands.
She’s also graced many runways with her makeup skill, becoming as welcome as the models that walk it. Pat has also collaborated with many luxury brands in advertising campaigns, imparting her vision to birth exciting new concepts.
She started out as a makeup artist before becoming the makeup mogul she is today. Makeup is her obsession and her own brand expresses her vision and creativity.
The brand is best known for their eyeshadow palettes. Each one packaged in a weighty, luxurious container. And inside the most unique, eye-catching, and snatching pigments you will ever lay your eyes on.
2. Beauty Bakerie
Cashmere Nicole started Beauty Bakerie in 2011 after a tough bout with cancer. This led to her to be more mindful about the things we put into our bodies, and this has been part of the thrust of Beauty Bakerie.
It’s a brand that does its due diligence in formulating quality products with only the best ingredients. And also does plenty to sweeten the lives of those that come upon their creative packaging.
She also founded Sugar Homes in 2016 to provide homes for orphaned children.
You’ll easily recognize the packaging as it resembles baked goods and sweets. My personal favorite? The setting powder! Both packaging and product are to splurge for.
3. Juvia’s Place (Cult Favorite Black Owned Makeup Brand)
This brand is in every makeup store you will ever come upon. And it’s always top shelf.
Eye pigments (and Juvia’s Place has plenty), the cateye – they all started in Ancient Egypt. Juvia’s Place – if you can’t tell from the packaging – is inspired by all the women that dominated Africa.
The brand is led by African tradition and up-to-date technology to bring us the most vibrancy and pigments the earth has to offer.
Juvia’s Place offers a complete makeup arsenal, but is best known for the eyeshadow palettes. The palette’s come in 6’s, 9’s, or 12’s and she’s not stingy on the size of the pans either.
A queen needs only dip her brush once.
4. B. Simone Beauty
B. Simone is a YouTuber turned business owner with her namesake brand, B. Simone Beauty.
The brand offers primarily lip products like glosses, matte lippies, and liners. As a YouTube celebrity, she also offers her own merchandise on her website.
B. Simone Beauty has quality products at competitive prices. The packaging also screams luxury and the texture buttery!
5. The Lip Bar
Melissa Butler, founder of The Lip Bar, is a boss lady built with resilience. After a failed attempt at gaining investment in Shark Tank, she continued on with The Lip Bar.
They feature a complexion quiz you can do on the site so shade matching is a thing of the past. TLB features a full range of makeup products and some hero products that are skin care hybrids.
Their Fresh Glow Bronzer + Blush Duo has such rich and vibrant pigments, they’re visible on even the deepest skin tones.
6. Fenty Beauty (Black Owned Makeup Brand That Sells Out Fast)
Black owned makeup brands don’t just cater to deeper shades. Rather they promote premise that makeup is and should be for everyone.
Bad Gal Riri herself redefines inclusivity in the beauty industry. Their Pro Filt’r foundation boasts as much as 50 shades, and not one ashy. (Because the 40 shades they started out with weren’t enough.)
The brand offers the whole enchilada, from face primer to gloss bombs.
Don’t miss out on their best-selling, award-winning Killawatt Freestyle highlighters. Every woman, no matter how deep or pale the skin tone, will transform into a diva like the bad gal herself.
7. Uoma Beauty
Uoma Beauty invites everyone into their beauty tribe.
Sharon Chuter, Nigerian-born, London-based founder created Uoma Beauty. She leads the “empowered tribe” with the values of self-expression, inclusivity, and beauty rebellion.
Shop their Say What! Foundation, an Allure 2020 Best of Beauty Award Winner. Formulated with their Biomimicry technology, the foundation offers a skin-like, vibrant-matte finish. To really celebrate our unique differences, their foundations come in six unique formulas that cater to tone-specific needs of different color groups.
No matter your “Skin Kin,” Uoma Beauty has something for you. What a beautiful tribe it is.
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8. IMAN Cosmetics
IMAN Cosmetics, founded by supermodel Iman herself, is not just a black owned makeup brand. It’s composed of 100% women, 85% black, and boasts to be 100% committed to women.
Shop their highly rated Luminous Foundation powders on Amazon. Each of their luminous shades offer full coverage with a sheer, skin-like finish.
9. Mented Cosmetics
Quality and equality – this is what Mented Cosmetics is to beauty gurus like yourself.
KJ Miller and Amanda Johnson, founders of Mented Cosmetics, created the brand to make sure everyone gets their own shade of nude lipstick. Because every beauty deserves it.
(Pig)Mented Cosmetics offers a wide range of products, giving you a base for eye makeup.
Do check out their Skin by Mented stick foundation – their best-selling product with five stars from 900+ reviews. It’s vegan, hypoallergenic, cruelty-free, and dermatologist-tested. And their growing fan base appreciates the easy to glide, perfected, natural finish.
10. Danessa Myricks Beauty
Danessa Myricks is a self-taught makeup artist whose creativity and artistry was born out of the need to be resourceful. With limited resources, she learned how to make the most of each product through different techniques and innovations.
Shop their Colorfix 24-hour Cream Color and their Colorfix Neon, also one of the Allure 2020 Best of Beauty Award Winners. Use them as standout stand alone cheek, lip, or eye makeup. It can even work as a waterproof makeup base for truly 24-hour makeup.
Who doesn’t love multi-tasking makeup?
11. The Crayon Case
Binders, a hefty box of crayons, and a pencil case full of writing instruments. It reminds me of The Crayon Case more than it does school.
Supa (a.k.a. Raynell Seward) creates the most memorable and creative packaging inspired by crayons. (And just about everything you’d find in your school bag.)
Check out their Box of Crayons palettes, which will inspire you to play with every hue. They’re very gorgeously pigmented, but without the fallout. Couple it with their Eye Glue Stick iShadow primer for a look that will last a day’s worth of classes.
12. Vera Moore Cosmetics
Vera Moore, actress now beauty mogul, started the namesake brand when she noticed from experience that there aren’t enough brands that cater to women of color.
The brand offers a full range of products from lipsticks, foundation, and even nail polish. They also offer skincare including makeup removers and chemical exfoliants.
13. Black Opal Beauty (Newly Blacked Owned Makeup Brand)
Even before Desiree Rogers and Mayberry McKissack stepped in as CEO and president respectively in 2019, Black Opal Beauty has been dishing out the best competitively-priced, five-star makeup products.
Check out their BLK/OPL TRUE COLORS Skin Perfecting Stick Foundation SPF 15. It’s formulated with skin tone-adjusting chromatic pigments that will serve up a flawless finish 100% of the time.
Check out this quick video tutorial on blush for deep skin tones:
All beauties understand the power of color both in our makeup palettes and in the board room. It’s the uniqueness in each color that brings out the best in each of us. It’s the contrast between different tones that brings forth beauty to the whole package.
Your makeup may be monochromatic, but brand leaders don’t have to be.
Did you see one of your current beauty favorites on the list? Or did we miss out on your cult-favorite black-owned makeup brands? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.
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