The Beauty Creators Who Challenged Stereotypes and Blazed the Trail

Fenty Beauty's launch and success exposed the global beauty industry's specific and destructive imagery – one that was mostly white and almost always light-skinned. The beauty products developed to enhance that imagery flattered and only worked on specific shades, facial structures, and textures. Typically, leaving out darker-skin tones and Black and African features. Perhaps the more sinister effect of this was the industry’s unrelenting insistence that this imagery they’d created was not only what was immediately available or practical to develop, but was what should be aspired to.

Throughout history, many have called out these harmful notions. Linking it with the emergence of bleaching products and a forced succumbing to specific beauty ideals. It was for this reason that Somali American supermodel Iman launched Iman Cosmetics in 1994, to cater to women of colour. The same year, Carol Jackson-Mouyiaris, frustrated by the difficulty in finding beauty products for her skin tone, turned to her husbandNiko Mouyiaris, a chemist and cosmetics entrepreneur, and they both founded Black Opal for women like her. Four years later, Black Opal launched in Kenya, marking its first entry into Africa.

While these early efforts laid critical groundwork, the industry still largely ignored darker skin tones. But in the early-to-mid 2010s, a crop of creators, many of them darkskinned, Black and African, began to demand for and enact real, long-lasting change. Creators like Jackie Aina, Dimma Umeh, Nyma Tang, all of African descent, took advantage of the visibility made available by platforms like YouTube to make their voices heard. They brought viewers into their difficulties with finding beauty products developed with other Black and African women in mind (which there was little of). They celebrated their beauty and invited viewers to do the same.

These YouTube channels were not just for sharing essential makeup tutorials, beauty hacks or helpful products suited to darker skin tones. They were and still are safe spaces, a gathering that corrected many of the harmful notions of beauty enforced on the people who watched them religiously.

“Two of my earliest beauty influences were Mena Adubea and Aina,” says Juliana Amoateng, one of Ghana’s foremost beauty creators. “Even though they’re based in the diaspora, they were among the first people I saw who looked like me, spoke boldly about representation, and didn’t shy away from advocating for darker skin tones in the beauty industry,” she adds. “Watching them reminded me that African beauty isn’t a box—it’s diverse, it’s powerful, and it deserves to be centred.”

Omosolape Yusuff, a Nigerian beauty content creator echoes Amoateng.“Watching creators like Aina on YouTube years ago shaped my perception of beauty at a time when I barely even knew a thing about beauty or makeup,” Yusuff tells OkayAfrica. Seeing Aina, who is also of Nigerian descent, was especially pivotal for Yusuff, who had trouble finding the right shades of powders and foundations in Nigeria. “Watching her share tips and tricks that she’d use for her daily makeup, how to draw brows correctly, sort of influenced me to start my first side hustle as a makeup artist while in university. I didn’t just want to replicate what I learned from her on myself, I felt there was a gap, so I took it upon myself to fill it by doing [other people’s] makeup and passing the knowledge to them while at it.”

While explaining the reason behind why she started her YouTube channel, Aina told Business Insider, “I always felt like I was an ‘other’ box at the makeup counter, and it was so annoying and so frustrating that I was like, ‘you know what? I am just gonna do this stuff myself, and then I’ll show people how to do it on YouTube.”

Alongside their tutorials, creators like Aina and Tang publicly called out beauty brands and urged them to be more inclusive. Aina maintained a strong stance on her channel, refusing to stop sharing her experience as a Black woman in the beauty industry, at a time when many accused her of being too focused on race. By recognizing that her experience as a Black woman was not exclusive from her work as a beauty creator, Aina inspired a generation of creators who are unafraid to make their art political and stand by it until something changes.

“It was really about us being there for each other and helping each other in a world where Africans were constantly being ignored, and I’m not just talking makeup but also hair, skincare,” says Yusuff.

Tang, who is of South Sudanese descent and typically reviews products that work on darker skin tones with her series #TheDarkestShade, had a video on her channel where she reviewed the beauty products that failed people of color that year. Her videos highlighted a lack of thoughtfulness when brands developed dark-skin friendly products, and how some products often don’t complement each other, making them essentially useless on darker skin.

“African beauty vloggers have completely reshaped the narrative,” says Amoateng. We’ve gone from simply consuming beauty ideals to defining them. Thanks to the advocacy of creators, there’s more visibility for African products, more inclusive conversations around skin tones and hair textures, and more pride in our heritage. And that advocacy is pushing brands to do better,” she adds.

In a 2018 video titled “Dear International Beauty Brands W*F Are You Guys Doing?” Umeh recorded a passionate, raw statement, calling out international brands who enter into the Nigerian market without tailoring their marketing to the right audience. Her video raised questions about how committed these brands are to serving the Nigerian market, why their marketing strategies are often detached or, worse still, not directly in conversation with the demographic they claim to target.

Videos like Umeh’s were especially important because at the time, international brands were packing up shop shortly after arriving in the country, not necessarily because there wasn’t a market for their products, but because they weren’t driving their marketing to the appropriate demographic of makeup users in Nigeria. Their marketing, according to Umeh, focused on general influencers, and not beauty enthusiasts.

“The major thing that they have done is show these brands that there are people here who need their products,” Chioma Mmeje, a fashion and beauty creator, says. “We did not always have this range of dark skin products before. And even beauty creators who started their own beauty companies, you can see the extra care that they take in the products they develop – people like Danessa Myricks and Pat McGrath.”

“Brands now consider and see us Africans and Africa as a group they can not, and must not, ignore if they’re going to remain relevant,” adds Yusuff. “You want your existing brand to do even better, you must be ready to create products for all Africans and our many hues and shades, and you must also be ready to use African creators and models in every marketing campaign. We simply can no longer be ignored, and I love that for us.”

Yusuff’s statement is true. Last year, L’Oreal signed on Nigerian actress and influencer Temi Otedola as their official ambassador and more African beauty and lifestyle creators are regularly included in campaigns for both international and local beauty products. In 2022, MAC Cosmetics unveiled Nigerian superstar Tiwa Savage as its first African MAC Maker, the program where the beauty giant collaborates with an influencer or celebrity to launch a limited-edition lipstick collection.

Black and African women are not just part of the conversation, but are also leading the conversation. In 2020, Nigerian American entrepreneur Olamide Olowe and her cofounder Claudia Tengraised $2.6m to launch Topicals and another $10m in 2022, making Olowe the youngest Black woman to raise that amount in funding. Topicals has gone on to become a trailblazer in providing more accessible options for addressing skincare issues that mostly affect women of colour.

As outspoken as these Black creators were in a competitive industry, they knew the risks involved in using their platforms to demand better. They faced backlash, risked losing their platforms, but still, they kept going. These years of speaking out, landed creators like Aina deals to develop makeup products and be involved in correcting past mistakes. Others have gone on to build other lifestyle businesses both in and outside the beauty industry.

All these steps have also made it easier for beauty creators like Yusuff and Mmeje to thrive in the industry, which in turn has helped in the rise of African beauty brands. Now the beauty and personal care market on the continent is projected to reach $69.53 billion in 2025, up from $13.4 billion in 2018. There are now skincare and makeup brands owned by African women and are perfectly suited for darker skin tones. “Makeup has become more accessible in the sense that we have a lot of choices. I still buy products from the U.S. and the UK, but I know that I can use the Nigerian products I have here, and I'll be fine,” Yusuff says.

Despite the ongoing difficulties still present in the industry, like pay disparities between African and Western creators, and fluctuating economies on the continent, African creators and beauty enthusiasts continue to redefine and insist on what beauty can look like.

As Amoateng posits, “I believe the African beauty industry is going to grow into a global powerhouse. There’s also a growing pride in using local ingredients and telling authentic African stories. I see more innovation, more exports of African beauty, and more seats at the global beauty table, but this time, with our names on them.”