“You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.”— Oprah Winfrey
Huda Kattan, the founder of Huda Beauty and Wishful who grew up in Tennessee as a Southern Girl, stands out from the ‘traditional’ tags and lives an entrepreneur-blogger life. Migrating with her parents from Iraq to America at a very young age, she found herself not ‘fitting in’. Belonging to a different race, her hair, eyes, face and everything was unique from her friends. This somehow inspired her to put on makeup, which in fact became a passion. Huda as a little girl of 14 or 15 started playing with beauty products and wearing eyeliner made her somewhat an expert in makeup. She even did brows for her older sister too.
She considers her struggle with identity was the greatest. To accept what she was, and affirm that she could also be beautiful. Huda thought that her idea of beauty was blonde hair and her-kinda eyes. Later, she recognizes herself and has once said that “Beauty is so transformational and it makes you feel like you have so much power and you feel like a different person but you’re never a different person.”
Huda Kattan borrowed a few dollars from her sister and bought lashes with it. She started sharing about this- fake lashes, a big deal of beauty- secret. Blogging about this on social media, for everyone’s queries on where she gets this, Huda revealed that she literally makes it by herself. Starting for 6000 dollars from her sister, Huda managed to publicize her idea, later getting a manufacturer and a packager for her lashes.
Making her initial product, a golden opportunity slipped in. Huda Kattan got a meeting with Sephora to launch her brand, and the initial set of eyelashes with a bit of risk. Gaining a sound amount, she later took a big step to distribute her product by herself as her profit was too low. From then on Huda had exponential growth. Starting to do business in colour cosmetics in 2016, the first product was lip contours which was expected to be a hit. Then Huda Beauty got a groove, step by step, into further cosmetic and make-up products.
Today, Huda Kattan is an articulate woman who has turned her interests into one of the world’s fastest growing beauty brands. She was chosen as one of “The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet” by Time in 2017, and she was listed as one of The Richest Self-Made Women and one of the Top Three Beauty Influencers by Forbes. As of 2022, Huda Beauty tops the Instagram Beauty section with 50 million followers. Kattan shares skincare routine, makeup tutorials and beauty tips. While deftly using YouTube and Instagram, the sales of her product offering to include liquid matte lipsticks and eyeliners, hit $10m.
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