1. Jackie Aina
With the tagline, ‘changing the standard of beauty, one video at a time‘, Jackie has been in the beauty industry since the early 2000s when beauty influencing was still fairly new. Being one of the few black women to usher in the new era of beauty at the time, she became the voice of censure that urged beauty companies to create a wider and more inclusive shade range for black women.
2. Nyma Tang
When Fenty Beauty launched their game-changing, 50 shades foundation collection, South-Sudanese beauty influencer Nyma Tang tested and approved the darkest shade from the collection.
She went on to start a series ‘The Darkest Shades’, on her Youtube channel where she tested what beauty brands called their darkest on herself and vetted if the shade ranges were truly inclusive. Her goal is to empower women of deeper skin shades, while also holding makeup manufacturers accountable.
3. Vanessa Gyimah
Vanessa Gyimah is an Ohio-based professional makeup artist and influencer who has been featured in Essence magazine. The Ghanaian influencer creates makeup tutorial videos on her Youtube and Instagram accounts, with a focus on black women.
4. Patricia Bright
The South London-born beauty guru started creating Youtube videos in 2009 while juggling her 9-to-5 with finance giant, Merrill Lynch. After leaving her job, she has since created a huge digital empire, working with brands like Dior, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and British Vogue.
She is also the host of the Youtube Original series If I Could Tell You Just One Thing, where she interviews different influential women in various industries.
5. Miss Darcei
The self-titled ‘Makeup Mythbuster’, creates hilarious Tiktok and Youtube content, where she shows that Cosplay makeup considered unsuitable on black girls compared to their non-black counterparts actually does look beautiful.
She also follows makeup tutorials created by non-black celebrities, to demonstrate if said tutorials are ‘black girl friendly’.
6. Golloria
Golloria is a young Texas-based Tiktok creator who creates exposé type of content to shed light on the beauty industry’s underrepresentation and non-inclusion of dark-skinned women, especially with affordable drug store products.
Gaining inspiration and confidence from Nyma Tang and her ‘The Darkest Shades’ series, she says she realizes that even in 2023, there is still a lot of work to be done in the beauty industry, and she wants to call it out.
