Beauty is big business. In Forbes’ recent list of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women,” seven out of 60 made their fortunes in cosmetics and skincare. One of them is Dubai-based makeup mogul Huda Kattan.
The 34-year-old businesswoman, who founded cosmetics brand Huda Beauty in 2013, ranked number 37, joining the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg and 20-year-old Kylie Jenner — whose estimated $900 million fortune also comes from a beauty empire (one that makes her more than twice as wealthy as big sister Kim Kardashian West).
For Huda, the US-born daughter of Iraqi immigrants, it started with a blog.
“I noticed there were no bloggers that looked like me… nobody that I could look (up) to,” Huda tells CNN. Disillusioned with her job in finance, Huda quit to become a makeup artist, and in 2010 she launched her own website with makeup tutorials, skincare routines and beauty hacks
Her commercial breakthrough came in 2013, when she teamed up with sisters Mona and Alya — who act as Huda Beauty’s global president and chief Instagram officer, respectively — to create a line of false eyelashes. They flew off shelves and caught the eye of Kim Kardashian herself.
But Huda feels Instagram was the turning point. “It was the catalyst that changed everything,” she says. “It changed the dynamics in which people not only communicate but are inspired as well.”
