cruelty-free
(21)
Thrive Causemetics and the $25,000 eyeliner that took its time
Before the teal mascara became familiar, Karissa Bodnar had an apartment full of eyeliner and dwindling savings. Her beauty business grew by solving a small, stubborn problem - then giving each sale a second purpose.
INNBEAUTY PROJECT asks the $50 question
Two beauty-industry veterans put clinical skincare in a brighter bottle and gave it a smaller price tag. Then a moisturizer helped them outgrow the audience everyone thought they had.
Ellis Brooklyn: The Perfume Brand That Outgrew “Clean”
Bee Shapiro started with two scented lotions and a journalist’s eye for an omission. Her fragrance company now offers a more interesting lesson: how to change your vocabulary without losing your point of view.
Lady Gaga Burned Down Her Own Makeup Brand - Then It Grew 400%
Haus Labs failed quietly on Amazon. Then Gaga and CEO Ben Jones threw out every formula, moved to Sephora, and bet the company on fermented arnica and 51 shades.
Sallve Handed the Lab Notebook to 10,000 Strangers
The Sao Paulo brand born on the internet turned skincare shoppers into co-creators - and a beauty blogger's audience into a company that raised roughly R$170 million.
Rare Beauty
Selena Gomez built a makeup company where a blush that sells every three seconds funds therapy for teenagers. Here is how Rare Beauty turned self-acceptance into a business worth around $2 billion.
ILIA Beauty
ILIA stopped treating “natural” as a purity test and started treating makeup as a delivery system for skincare. That pragmatic turn helped a lip-balm experiment become a prestige beauty business approaching $200 million in annual revenue.
Kosas
A bug taxonomist turned four kitchen-table lipsticks into a $150 million makeup company - by insisting cosmetics do the work of skincare.
Public Goods
Public Goods is a New York-based, membership-driven direct-to-consumer brand that sells its own line of healthy, sustainable everyday essentials - personal care, household, cleaning, grocery, and supplements - at near-wholesale prices. Pitched by co-founder Morgan Hirsh as 'Amazon with a soul,' the company launched on Kickstarter in 2017, built a single house brand with minimalist design and clean ingredients, and ties purchases to reforestation and food-bank donations.
Dermalogica
Dermalogica is a Los Angeles-born professional skin care company founded in 1986 by skin therapist Jane Wurwand and her husband Raymond. Built out of the International Dermal Institute - a training school Wurwand launched three years earlier - the brand pairs clinically minded, irritant-free formulations with rigorous therapist education, selling only where a licensed skin professional can advise. Now a Unilever Prestige brand sold in more than 80 countries, Dermalogica is widely regarded as the world's number one professional skin care line, known for franchises like BioLumin-C, Age Smart, Active Clearing and the teen-focused Clear Start.
DIBS Beauty
DIBS Beauty - short for Desert Island Beauty Status - is a New York and Austin-based makeup brand built on a simple premise: fewer products, better results. Co-founded in 2021 by creator Courtney Shields and operator Jeff Lee alongside Tula Skincare's Ken Landis and Dan Reich, DIBS makes multi-use, vegan, cruelty-free essentials like its hero Desert Island Duo blush-and-bronzer stick. The brand grew primarily direct-to-consumer through Shields' social following, took growth capital from L Catterton in 2023, and expanded into Ulta Beauty in 2024. Its tagline: 'Do less. Look like you did the most.'
MALIN+GOETZ
MALIN+GOETZ is a New York-founded modern apothecary that makes uncomplicated, high-performance skincare, fragrances and candles for all skin types. Started in 2004 by Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz - a couple who met the beauty and design worlds head-on - the brand launched with six essentials gentle enough for Malin's own sensitive, reactive skin. Two decades later it is a cult grooming staple sold in dozens of countries, known for its grapefruit face cleanser, eucalyptus deodorant and its 19th-century-apothecary-inspired packaging.
Red Flower
Red Flower is a New York City natural lifestyle company founded in 1999 by cultural anthropologist and herbalist Yael Alkalay. It makes biodegradable, biocompatible botanical beauty - certified organic perfumes, aromatherapeutic body and hair care, bath-house-inspired home spa collections, and its signature petal-topped candles. Vegan, cruelty-free and free of parabens, sulfates and petrochemicals, the brand turns everyday washing and bathing into deliberate sensory rituals, and supplies luxury hotels and spas with award-winning guest-room amenities.
Yael Alkalay
Yael Alkalay is the founder and CEO of Red Flower, a New York-based natural beauty and lifestyle company she launched in 1999. A former creative director at Shiseido in Japan and a Columbia MBA, she built Red Flower around botanical formulations, aromatherapy and self-care rituals, selling to Barneys in her first year and growing the brand into a SoHo flagship and a fixture in spas and hotels. She is an early and persistent voice for non-toxic, biodegradable, vegan and cruelty-free beauty.
SEEN Haircare
SEEN Haircare is a dermatologist-developed hair and scalp care brand built on the idea that 'haircare is skincare.' Founded by Harvard-trained dermatologist Dr. Iris Rubin after her own haircare products caused facial breakouts, SEEN makes shampoos, conditioners, serums, masks and styling products clinically proven to be non-comedogenic (won't clog pores) and safe for sensitive skin. The brand is sold direct-to-consumer and at more than 700 Ulta Beauty doors, and closed a $9 million Series A in September 2024.
Henry Rose
Henry Rose is a radically transparent line of genderless fine fragrance founded by actor Michelle Pfeiffer. Built with the Environmental Working Group and International Flavors & Fragrances, it was the first perfume line to earn both EWG Verified and Cradle to Cradle Gold certifications while disclosing 100% of its ingredients - proving a luxury scent can be both sophisticated and clean.
Homecourt
Homecourt is a luxury home and personal care brand founded in 2022 by actress Courteney Cox and beauty-industry veteran Sarah Jahnke. It applies beauty-grade standards to everyday household products, selling non-toxic, plant-based, fine-fragrance cleaning sprays, candles, body care and laundry products through its own site and retailers including Nordstrom, Bluemercury, Revolve and Amazon. The company raised an $8 million Series A in October 2025 led by CULT Capital after doubling revenue every year with a famously tiny team.
Function of Beauty
Function of Beauty is a New York-based beauty company that makes personalized hair, skin, and body care products. Customers take an online quiz about their hair type, goals, and preferences, and the company's in-house technology mixes a formula made to order - down to color and scent. Founded in 2015 out of MIT, it helped popularize mass personalization in beauty and has since expanded from a pure DTC model into major retailers like Target and CVS.
e.l.f. Beauty
e.l.f. Beauty is an Oakland-based, publicly traded cosmetics company (NYSE: ELF) built on a simple disruptive idea: prestige-quality makeup and skincare that almost everyone can afford. Founded in 2004 as e.l.f. (Eyes Lips Face) and reshaped under CEO Tarang Amin since 2014, it has grown into a multi-brand house spanning e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. SKIN, Well People, Keys Soulcare, Naturium, and Hailey Bieber's rhode. Every product is vegan and cruelty-free, most cost under $20, and the company has become a case study in social-first, community-driven brand building.
Kendo Brands, Inc.
Kendo Brands is a San Francisco-based beauty brand incubator and operator owned by LVMH. Named as a play on the phrase 'can do,' Kendo creates and acquires beauty brands and scales them into global businesses, blending startup energy with the backing of the world's largest luxury group. Its portfolio includes Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin, Fenty Hair and Fenty Fragrance by Rihanna, OLEHENRIKSEN, and Lip Lab, distributed in 60+ countries.
Paula's Choice Skincare
Paula's Choice is a Seattle-based, research-backed skincare brand founded by consumer advocate Paula Begoun in 1995. Built on the radical idea that beauty should be judged by ingredients rather than marketing, the company sells fragrance-free, cruelty-free, science-driven products direct to consumers around the world. Its cult 2% BHA Liquid Exfoliant and a culture of ingredient transparency turned a self-published 'Cosmetics Cop' into a roughly $300M brand that Unilever acquired in 2021.