Huda Kattan is a Middle Eastern beauty blogger turned Entrepreneur who has more Instagram followers than you can shake a stick at. 49.4 million to be precise. Originally a make-up artist and blogger, it was Kattan’s discontent with products already out there that inspired her to start her own line “Huda Beauty”.  “I was never satisfied with the style and quality of lashes that were on the market,” she says. So, with the encouragement of her sister Mona, Kattan decided to make her own. Her empire has since grown to include shimmery jewel-toned eyeshadow palettes, lipsticks, perfumes, foundations, contouring kits and more. You name it – she’s already selling it.

Her ultimate goal? Inclusivity. “Our goal at Huda Beauty is to inspire anyone and everyone to create their own idea of beautiful with all of the products we offer,” says Huda Kattan.

The Middle East’s foremost beauty blogger was born in Oklahoma in 1983, and when she was two-years-old her family moved to Tennessee, and eventually Boston. Her Iraqi mother and father emigrated to the United States to teach Biology and study Mechanical Engineering, respectively

Although Kattan trained to be a makeup artist in Hollywood, her first experience with beauty products came through her sister Alya, who is ten years her senior, she revealed to Minthe. By the time she was 14, she was sculpting her sister’s eyebrows. She began blogging in 2010, and reached worldwide mainstream fame within couple of years thanks to her viral beauty hacks, tips and cult products. Now, the Huda Beauty Blog boasts 70+ million views each year and her makeup line is stocked in more than 2000 stores worldwide.

Building a beauty brand from scratch with only four people -the three sisters and Huda’s assistant- and without proper infrastructure was a challenging endeavor, Huda recalls. “The distributor we were working with was really taking advantage of the fact that we were a small company,” she says.
“They were not paying us the right way, they were not ordering right quantities, so we were always out of stock, and we were literally dying as a brand, because of our distributor. I want to say this to all young businesses, because, in the beginning, it is really challenging, because you have no other choice. Those were the two most challenging years of my life, because you didn’t know whether you’ll survive. You know that you have an amazing product, but you don’t know whether you are going to be able to continue. When we finally managed to save enough money, my husband joined us, and we were able to get rid of our distributor.”

In 2015, Christopher Goncalo, Huda’s husband, joined the company as its Chief Operating Officer, and he created a proper distribution channel that enabled the company to finally fund their cosmetics. A year later, the company launched the Huda Beauty makeup line; however, it brought Huda face-to-face with one more of her self-limiting beliefs. “For the longest time, we were holding ourselves back, because we said, ‘We are in Dubai, so we can’t be competing against the biggest bloggers and the biggest companies in the US.’ But I feel that that shifted in 2016, when I was like, ‘Wait, why can’t we be the biggest in the world?’ As soon as that shift happened in the brain, that’s when the things changed outside as well.”

She stands as a testament to the limitless power of believing in yourself and your brand, and of course, the transformative power of makeup itself.