August 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 25

POWER POSE | BUILDING THE HUDA BEAUTY MEGABRAND OUT OF DUBAI

POWER

POSE

HUDA KATTAN MONA KATTAN ALYA KATTAN

The Kattan sisters on building the Huda Beauty megabrand out of Dubai

(and no, they aren’t done with their ambitions just yet)

by TAMARA PUPIC

>>>

I

n person, Huda Kattan, the driving force

behind one of today’s fastest growing

beauty brands, Huda Beauty, radiates

steely self-assurance. Not that I have

expected anything different from a

woman who is currently ranked 36 on

Forbes’ list of “America’s Richest Self-

Made Women.” Sitting beside me at

the brand’s headquarters in Dubai, she

looks as striking as seen on the front

cover of this issue- the abundant curls

of black hair frame her flawless face,

complete with immaculate makeup,

and she is dressed for not just any,

but exactly the type of success she

wants in a sequined power suit. And,

during the interview, she wants to

broach the topic I least expect. “When you hit a certain

level of success, you realize that it can cause some really

serious issues to come up,” Huda says. “And if you don’t

find the right way to deal with it, it could make you very

depressed, very purposeless. It’s scary.”

Up until now, Huda has used a makeup brush as an

empowerment tool to guide women on how to paint

their own stories of betterment on their own faces.

Over almost a decade, her brainchild Huda Beauty has

grown from a blog to a beauty brand that now offers 213

products across five categories (complexion, lips, eyes,

body, and tools), the newly-launched sub-brand Kayali, a

fragrance line developed by her sister Mona Kattan, while

an arsenal of the brand’s skincare products is also in the

works. However, what makes the story of Huda Beauty

extraordinary is that Huda is now willing to take all those

layers of makeup off, confront her insecurities, and learn

how to feel truly confident inside- while sharing it all with

her 40 million and more followers, of course. “A lot of issues

from my childhood were driving me, and I had no idea,” she

says, adding that she has been working with a life coach

over the last couple of years. “I never felt like I belonged

in society, I never felt really comfortable in my own skin,

and there are literally billions of people who feel like that.

However, I never understood that it was the thing that

gave me my drive, that I always wanted to prove that I was

good enough.”