Where Do Celebrity Beauty Brands Go To Die?

“We were Amyris’ cash cow,” Maya*, a former member of the creative production team at Rose Inc. tells me. Amyris, the incubator behind Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s cosmetic brand, Rose Inc., and Jonathan van Ness’ JVN Hair, declared bankruptcy in the US in 2023. “We were doing well. We were the only profitable brand they owned. But instead of letting Rose Inc. reap the rewards of that success, Amyris took those profits and assigned us minimal budgets,” says Maya. “It was incredibly frustrating to work on successful campaigns to then be told that you only have 30% of the budget you had last year because Amyris was doing badly as a whole.”

So goes the tumultuous story of Rose Inc., a “clean” beauty brand founded and fronted by Huntington-Whiteley in 2018, bringing products to market in 2021. Two short years later, the model walked away, citing “significant changes within the business” under new ownership. What had happened? How had a brand with such a loyal customer base and instantly recognisable founder tumbled into the crevasse of other waning celebrity brands? And why do so many famous-fronted brands meet the same fate?

In a landscape of rapidly proliferating celebrity beauty brands, a handful stand out: Rare Beauty (Selena Gomez), Haus Labs (Lady Gaga), Fenty Beauty (Rihanna), Pattern Beauty (Tracee Ellis Ross), Rhode Skin (Hailey Bieber) and Victoria Beckham Beauty, to name a few. For all the success of those six, there are hundreds of celebrity brands that don’t quite nail the landing. Alicia Keys’ Keys Soulcare, Pharrell Williams’ Humanrace and Millie Bobby Brown Bongiovi’s Florence by Mills have not had the cut-through or fostered a similar cult following. But that doesn’t deter other famous people from trying their hand. 

Just this month, Courteney Cox’s brand Homecourt expanded into luxury body care, while Blake Lively announced Blake Brown Beauty, a hair care brand focused on shampoos and masks. In February, Beyoncé brought Cécred into the world. Among these launches, there’s been Brad Pitt's confused, wine-inspired skincare line (replete with three-figure price tag) and Carmen Electra’s song-inspired line, which has since disappeared from the internet. In what feels like one ginormous cash grab, why do some fail so publicly while others reap rewards?

For Rose Inc. (a brand that still trades, albeit without its namesake), critical issues stemmed from being partly owned by a business that was said to be haemorrhaging cash. “We were $1.1 billion in debt and still hiring, still doing campaigns,” Maya shares. “It was ludicrous. I had suppliers who hadn’t been paid for six months and were owed over $180,000.” Following its aforementioned bankruptcy, Amyris forced the sale of JVN Hair, Rose Inc. and Biossance, among others. It appeared to be the latest casualty of a market struggling under the weight of so many brands entering at once, as well as a severe lack of capital and conflicting communications.

A statement shared by Huntington-Whiteley in May this year (which has seemingly since been deleted) touched on various reasons for stepping away from her brand, the foremost being the change in ownership. “In 2018, I founded Rose Inc. with a vision to foster a beauty community and create exceptional products in line with my values and beliefs,” she wrote. “However, due to significant changes within the business, I’ve made the considered decision to step down from the brand.” Since that statement, Huntington-Whiteley has not mentioned Rose Inc. or posted any images of the products, a distinct departure from her previously Rose Inc.-dedicated account. A week after her statement, she shared a six-image carousel post about Dolce and Gabbana Beauty, the door between Rosie and Rose Inc. firmly shut.

Not all celebrity brands experience such boom and bust, though. Some become household names and unequivocal successes. Take Rhode, for example.

Admittedly, the first time I tried Hailey Bieber’s beauty and skincare brand, I was underwhelmed. Sure, the packaging and marketing campaigns captured the zeitgeist and she did a stellar job of cookie-crumbing the launches on her social media. But what was inside failed to capture my imagination. 

A year later, when she brought the Pocket Blush to market, I didn’t rush to try it. When I discovered how brilliant it is — creamy, pigmented and long-lasting — it was a total surprise. A celebrity brand I had relegated to the pile of good-not-great had created something undeniably impressive. It felt even more shocking that it had come from a celebrity beauty brand, something many of us, myself included, are quick to dismiss. Had I subconsciously raised the bar for Bieber because I believed she had access to the best of the best when it came to product formulation and research and development? Well, yes. Many of us do this. It’s called the authority effect: when consumers view celebrities as credible authority figures with access to better resources and, as such, expect more from them.

It’s worth reflecting on. The immediate annoyance I feel when another celebrity announces another beauty brand is perhaps less well-founded than I thought. Yes, many are trying to monetise their audience in a lazy, imagination-lacking way that can often feel galling. But others are the result of genuine interest.

“We forget the human side of celebrity beauty brands,” says Rhea Cartwright, a brand consultant and ex-head of beauty at Liberty London. “If you were to ask a teenager if they would one day love to have a beauty or fragrance brand, they’d say absolutely. Why would that childhood dream change just because they are famous? It’s when the product-founder fit isn’t right that celebrity brands feel jarring,” she continues. “For Hailey Bieber, someone who has spoken at length about skincare and makeup, a beauty brand makes sense.”

She’s right. Bieber has long documented her interest in skincare, makeup and hair care. Before she launched Rhode, she would regularly post videos of the makeup she or her makeup artists were using and lo-fi bathroom videos of her skincare routine. That sweet spot — recognition paired with active interest and participation — is what sets the successful brands apart and Rhode has it in spades.

“It has to start with the founder. They’re the skin, the hair, the [insert body part],” Cartwright explains. “And then it's about community. Celebrities with beauty brands that are thriving have always been deeply connected to their community. Take Rihanna, Tracee Ellis Ross, Lady Gaga or Selena Gomez — their fans are obsessed. It’s not enough just to be famous. There has to be an emotional connection for it to work.”

Maintaining that emotional connection requires a celebrity founder to repeatedly and regularly interact and champion their brand. While some may deem it the fluffy stuff, it can be a real marker of whether a brand is destined for success or a TK Maxx shelf, as Susan Yara, former beauty journalist, content creator and founder of Naturium, explains to me: “Take Selena [Gomez]. You see how much she participates in Rare Beauty. While we might never know how much she’s involved in the innovation or their operations, we see her going out, meeting with influencers, going to events and speaking with her customers about the products. It feels very authentic.”

There has to be more than a likeable celebrity face to buy a product. Our perception of the person (do they align with my values, champion the same causes or act as an aspirational figure?) is important but it’s not the entire story. There are plenty of funny, admirable, talented celebrities who, having released a beauty brand, go down in our estimations. One salient example is JLo Beauty. In 2021, Jennifer Lopez launched a six-part skincare line hinged on extra virgin olive oil, an ingredient that she said she had used on her face for years. Without casting tweakment or surgical aspersions, Lopez has not only used olive oil for her skin: Over the years she’s gone on record listing other, luxury products she uses. (The main interview she did with Hello! listing her skincare routine has seemingly been scrubbed from the internet.) It's little wonder, then, that she was accused of dishonesty. On top of this, the product names seemed straight out of the early ‘90s (Firm + Flaunt, Smooth + Seduce, Tighten + Tease), lacking the ingredient-led transparency our contemporary skincare market demands. 

Sofia*, a PR account manager in London, tells me that she trusts celebrity skincare lines far less than other ventures. “I’m more hesitant with celebrity-owned skincare brands than I am with celebrity makeup brands. Because I have acne-prone skin and I know how much goes into keeping my skin healthy, I have less trust in celebrities who have access to top dermatologists and facialists to preserve their skin health — not just the products they’re selling.”

It makes sense. Celebrities with “perfect” skin selling skincare convey the message (subliminally or otherwise) that you too could have skin like theirs — if you buy their products. It's a marketing formula that can translate to anything: hair, nails, body or supplements. 

“Psychologically, celebrity beauty brands tap into principles such as social proof and the halo effect,” explains Shakaila Forbes-Bell, Clearpay’s consumer insights psychologist. “Social proof refers to the influence that seeing a product endorsed by a celebrity has on our perception of its value and quality. The halo effect is the cognitive bias where the positive impression of a celebrity can extend to their products, leading us to believe that their beauty products are superior.”

These phenomena can lead consumers to equate a celebrity’s appearance with the products they promote, usually via highly visual channels like Instagram and TikTok, says Forbes-Bell. “And this year, 27% of consumers are spending more on beauty because of social media,” she adds. The data supports this. In 2023, the global social commerce market (i.e. selling via social media) was valued at $1.3 trillion. This figure is expected to balloon to $6.2 trillion by 2030. For someone with a sizeable audience (hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers), capitalising on sales via social media seems sensible. But the success of that approach hinges on the perception their consumers have of them — something that can change as they do.

For Izzy, a 31-year-old chief of brand based in London, Kylie Jenner’s makeup brand only caught her attention when it changed its approach and branding. “Years ago, Kylie Cosmetics didn’t interest me. The products were brightly coloured eyeshadows and lip glosses, which was a direct reflection of her image at the time. Now, however, as her aesthetic has changed — becoming more minimal and simple — I’m much more receptive to what she’s selling.”

At the beginning of the year, beauty journalist and content creator Laura Capon posted a TikTok video detailing the five beauty brands she felt were at risk of shuttering in 2024. Among them was Nimya, the personal care brand created by YouTuber Nikki Tutorials aka Nikkie de Jager-Drossaers. Capon cited the reason for her prediction as de Jager-Drossaers’ decision to launch skincare before makeup, the niche she is best known for. “People want makeup from you,” Capon says. “Your [personal] brand isn’t established in skincare, it’s established in makeup. Looking at the website, it’s not aspirational, it’s not affordable, it’s not even particularly cool.” Another influencer brand with a tumultuous story is Selfless By Hyram, created by Hyram Yarbro. Yarbro, who has over 4.5 million YouTube subscribers and 826k Instagram followers, first released his skincare line in collaboration with The Inkey List, launching exclusively at Sephora in 2021. In January 2023, Sephora dropped both Selfless By Hyram and Item Beauty (Addison Rae’s blue light-focused skincare brand). 

That said, it wouldn’t be fair to lump all celebrity brands together and judge accordingly. It’s simply not a fair test. Fenty Beauty, for example, is a runaway celebrity success but it's backed by LVMH, the luxury conglomerate that owns Sephora. “I think people forget that Fenty will have access to all of that Sephora data,” cautions Cartwright. “You can’t compare it to brands that don’t have that resource. They’re not in the same bracket.”

Ultimately, the thing we want from celebrity brands is the same thing we want from non-celebrity brands: products that stand up on their own at the right price point, an authentic story or mission and, if visible, a founder who makes sense to us. When any of these pillars is missing, the structure feels disingenuous — and who wants to feel like they’re being duped?