As DEI Rollbacks Hit The Beauty Industry, Which Brands Are Still Committed To Diversity?

“DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone that uses it,” says tech billionaire and Trump’s “special government employee” (whatever that means), Elon Musk. This stance has since been echoed by President Trump during his entire campaign and by day one in office, he had terminated all federal DEI, DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility), as well as any programs, grants, or contracts related to its implementation, calling them “forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”

Now, let’s roll the tapes back to the tail end of 2020, where we bore witness to a global racial reckoning during the Black Lives Movement, igniting a revolution in DEI for Black folks. Our beloved beauty industry pledged a renewed commitment to the cause (, in the form of grants and funding initiatives —  the Glossier Fund Program, Sephora Accelerate, Pull Up for Change Impact Fund — for Black consumers, creators, founders, et all. Back then, you couldn’t scroll far on socials without seeing an infographic-styled pledge of allegiance to the movement or a dainty Black square with a touching caption – all carefully crafted to fit the brand's Instagram aesthetic.

As brands scrambled to allocate budget for promised grants, funding, and resources to support Black-owned businesses, it also heralded a new era for Black beauty founders, and consumers who finally started to feel catered to. However, the landscape is changing. Target, Amazon, Walmart, Meta, McDonald’s, and many government organizations like NASA  have already announced plans to end their DEI programs. Our question is: what does this mean for the beauty industry and what happened to those 2020 pledges? 

The last five years proved to be transformative for Black beauty founders. Fueled by increased awareness and grant opportunities, they introduced groundbreaking, problem-solving products that addressed long-neglected needs in the market. Companies like Rebundle, founded by Ciara Imani May, revolutionized the synthetic hair industry with non-toxic, biodegradable braiding hair, by creating non-toxic, plant-based hair extensions. “I received a few grants during 2020, but the Glossier Grant Program and Amika’s Rooted In Growth Program were the two that had the most impact for us, and helped us with relationships, insights, and lending the expertise of their team who could help with specific challenges. Both of those brands continue to be supporters of ours,” May tells Unbothered.

Other brands emerged, offering products specifically tailored to textured hair, deeper skin tones, and wellness concerns unique to Black consumers. Enter Khadija Imara who co-founded an innovative and revolutionary hair comb that efficiently unravels multiple braids at the same time while also detangling hair – The Original Unbraider. Imara tells Unbothered: “The programs that I’ve been a part of have all been specific to DEI and have been a foundational part of our growth and journey. The first one I was a part of was the Impact Lab. They reached out to us via DM and they gave us a CFO for six weeks and that taught me all of the foundations of financing a business.” 

Both Khadija and her mother-slash-business partner Natasha Anderson have not only managed to build a product that actually solves a problem, but they’ve also built a loyal community with a marketing strategy that often finds them going viral. “Glossier also gave us a grant, and they not only talk the talk but they walk the walk. CPG [Consumer packaged goods] is very cash intensive as you have to put all your money up front for all your inventory, and keep restocking, so a grant like that with people and brands that are setting you up for success is extremely important,” Imara adds.

It’s clear that many of these innovations were only made possible by grants and funding initiatives launched in the wake of BLM, such as the Glossier Fund Program, Sephora Accelerate, Pull Up for Change Impact Fund, amongst many others. 

Glossier was an early pledger and the brand really put their big girl money where their mouth is, setting aside $500,000 in the form of grants that were to be distributed to Black-owned beauty businesses.

Non-profit organization The Fifteen Percent Pledge was founded by fashion designer Aurora James and run by CEO and Good American co-founder Emma Grede. They not only offer grants for Black owned businesses they also hold  conglomerates accountable for what their counter spaces actually look like. In 2020, James took to Instagram and tagged the world’s largest retail brands, to say: “We represent 15% of the population and we need to represent 15% of your shelf space,” encouraging 28 of the world’s most recognized retailers to join the pledge (including the likes of Sephora and Ulta).

Ulta Beauty partnered with Fifteen Percent Pledge on a program featuring a 10-week curriculum, including a brand strategy and positioning session and a $10,000 award for one of the brands – MUSE Accelerator. Each year a cohort of eight brands is selected and mentored through success.

Ulta’s mission remains focused on inclusivity and support for underrepresented brands. When reached for comment, a brand representative stated, “We are currently in a quiet period for Q4 earnings, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to comment.” However, their latest press release suggests they are moving forward with their pledge for the fund of the 2024 cohort, despite the ongoing DEI rollbacks.

The Sephora Accelerate program’s alumni list includes brands that are becoming household names like Topicals, as well as brands tapping into a largely underrepresented market of Black-founded fragrance houses, such as Moodeaux and Brown Girl Jane.

All this investment does not happen in a vacuum though, the Black dollar is extremely valuable in the industry so it’s not a bad idea to keep the innovators in the forefront of that spend in the system. In fact, in 2023, market research firm NielsenIQ estimated Black consumer spending on beauty products reached $9.4 billion, a $1.3 billion year-over-year increase.

For a brief moment, it seemed the beauty industry was on the brink of genuine change, for the long haul. Fast forward to 2025, and the landscape looks starkly different. The Fearless Fund, a pioneering venture capital firm dedicated to investing in women of color, has faced legal challenges and was recently blocked from disbursing grants. Target, which back in 2021 committed to investing over $2 billion in Black-owned businesses and adding 500 Black-owned brands to its shelves, has backpedaled quicker than a clearance rack on Black Friday.

The news was an unsettling revelation for many Black beauty founders whose products are still carried by retailers, though for how much longer is unclear. Many, though, are urging consumers NOT to boycott retailers in response as that will only diminish their own brand’s sales. 

Target was asked for comment and has not yet responded.

This move is emblematic of the broader backlash against DEI initiatives in the U.S. from the conservative movement that has actively been seeking to dismantle programs aimed at promoting racial and gender equity, for quite some time. 

The DEI rollback gained momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling against race-conscious college admissions. It triggered a wave of lawsuits aimed at dismantling policies designed to foster workplace and academic diversity. DEI quickly became a scapegoat, falsely blamed for everything from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Boeing’s safety issues to major infrastructure failures like the Baltimore bridge collapse and even the recent DC plane crash. In political discourse, DEI became the ultimate third rail. 

The claims that these tragic events were caused by DEI is nonsensical. It’s important to make it abundantly clear that these findings are egregiously inaccurate and fundamentally damaging to the movement and progression for equity and leverage of Black owned businesses, Black founders and the general Black community. Subsequently, businesses have been relieved of the political pressure to support such initiatives and it sadly has had a trickling effect on all industries, including beauty. As of 2022, as many as 60 percent of all Chief Diversity Officers left their jobs at S&P 500 companies, recently across all industries including beauty, of which many positions were held by Black women. 

“These efforts were never designed for longevity; they were reactive, not structural,” wrote Black Beauty Club founder Tomi Talabi in an Instagram Stories post. Like Talabi, many skeptics within the community believed that corporate DEI programs were doomed to fail. 

On Instagram, Talabi contends that the “greatest progress” for Black-owned businesses has always come from within the Black community itself, rather than from external corporations. In response to Brown's Instagram post, Süprmarkt, a Black-owned organic and vegan grocery store in Los Angeles, agrees, commenting, “If we want liberation we have to create it. This includes establishing infrastructure, supply chains, distribution, etc. It is super easy to get upset and shift from one retailer or another but very few people want to roll up their sleeves and create solutions which take lifetimes of work. We’re in this position because we have almost zero ownership across all the verticals we consume the most.”

Many other brand founders echo this sentiment. Eunice Cofie-Obeng, scientist and founder of Nuekie –  a skincare brand scientifically formulated with a unique combination of traditional African medicine and cutting edge science – tells us: “I’ve always been a fan of creating your own table. I’ve heard thousands of nos, so I told myself, “why should I wait to create this for me when I have everything within me to create it for myself?” 

The nos from retailers, was exactly the redirection that Imara, co-founder of The Unbraider, needed to spearhead her brand’s growth and community building. “I recently spoke to a buyer of a major retailer and they told me that my product was too niche. This made me pivot my business strategy and instead of going into retail, I’m focusing on meeting my customers at beauty salons, so they’re purchasing The Unbraider at the same place they’re getting their hair braided. This also keeps the Black dollar circulating within the community.”

In the midst of donating to the BLM movement, many brands also took the initiative (if not for public pressure) to revise their own hiring ethics and commit to more inclusive hiring, to reflect the diverse consumer market with fairer representation. Some would call it affirmative action, or quota employment, but it’s really more so a deeper look into whether their business is doing unbiased hiring.

A 2022 study by consultancy firm McKinsey & Company showed that from entry-level to the C-suite (CEO, CFO, etc), and from retailers to beauty houses, only four to five percent of all employees in the US beauty industry are Black.

Back in 2020 Revlon USA revealed that only 5% of employees at the director level or above are Black, while L’Oréal USA, counted 8% who identify as Black at the executive level in America. And at Lime Crime, you’d find a grand total of zero Black employees at the brand’s corporate headquarters. Despite how disappointing these figures were, they’d been released by the brands voluntarily — all have since pledged to look into their DEI hiring strategy as a step towards better transparency. This is reflected across the board for many other major corporations. In fact, Black CEO representation on the Fortune 500 is so bad that this year’s 1.6% is a near-record high – two are Black women. All of the above brands have been contacted for comment.

All thanks to Pull Up For Change instagram’s page for those findings. Created by founder and former CEO of UOMA Beauty, Sharon Chuter, who in the wake of BLM, was stepping on everybody’s necks, from the big conglomerates to the trendier niche beauty brands. 

Subsequently, Chuter then embarked on project Make It Black that enlisted brands like Briogeo, Maybelline and ColourPop to redesign the packaging of their most popular products in the colour Black and funneled gross profits from sales of the redesigned products to Pull Up For Change’s Impact Fund for Black-owned businesses. Although its impact was colossal – with countless founders singing their praises – the status of Pull Up For Change is currently unknown and it hasn’t been posted on Instagram since March 2023. Chuter has been contacted for comment.

“Pull Up For Change Impact Fund was actually the very first grant that Moodaux received and it was a pre-launch opportunity. We walked away with $25,000 which allowed us to launch,” Brianna Arps, founder of Moodeaux tells Unbothered.  

Having more Black women at the table is a benefit for all, not just for Black folks. It would significantly reduce PR disasters – including but not limited to non-inclusive foundation ranges, 50 shades of ashy undertones, and poor-quality hair products for Afro and curly hair, among many other common beauty woes the girlies are tired of tussling over on the internet. Having a non-diverse management or C-suite team is a stairway to brand obliteration. A McKinsey & Company 2022 study corroborates this, noting that companies that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive are better able to respond to challenges, win top talent, and meet the needs of varied customer bases. The finding is also backed by another report, published in 2020, that analyzed 1,000 US firms and found that companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity were more likely to outperform their peers. 

E.l.f is one of only two publicly traded companies with a board that’s more than 78% women and 44% people of color. E.l.f. has reaped the benefits of its strategy. The company has posted 23 consecutive quarters of sales growth, and its stock has increased by more than 700% over the past five years. “Diverse voices actually help us because they’re bringing different perspectives,” CEO Tarang Amin, when speaking to CNN Business.

“We need more funding.” Cofie-Obeng adds.

According to a report from the Federal Reserve, Black-owned businesses are less likely to secure bank loans or receive venture capital funding compared to their white counterparts. These disparities were the driving force behind the creation of grant programs specifically for Black founders. The reasoning behind these undeniable roadblocks really boils down to systemic oppression and discrimination. It’s really as simple as that. A brand needs money to survive and grow. Unfortunately, the funding that circulates to fuel brand growth is often hindered or simply inaccessible for Black founders, regardless of how innovative and profitable they may be.

Since 2020, although 29 major retailers have taken the Fifteen Percent Pledge, – a commitment to dedicate 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses – very few of these retailers have released publicly available data on their progress toward the pledge, or have only partially fulfilled their commitments by reaching the 15% goal in certain categories, like haircare.

The rollback of grants and DEI initiatives threatens to stifle innovation and diversity in the beauty industry and fails to reflect the diverse global consumer base. Black-owned brands have historically filled gaps that mainstream companies overlooked. If these businesses disappear, consumers will lose access to products that cater to their unique needs. 

The beauty industry has also been tackling these racial disparities within its own ecosystem, and prejudice within this community has been no secret. Despite their significant contribution, Black-owned beauty brands capture only 2.5% of industry revenue. This disparity reinforces the concept of the "lifecycle of the Black dollar," which refers to the economic power and spending habits of Black consumers. While Black consumers are a substantial market force, their spending often does not circulate back into Black-owned businesses, leading to economic leakage. 

Social media has transformed the way consumers engage with brands, fundamentally changing their expectations. Today, many consumers conduct thorough research on brands before making a purchase, and an increasing number are prioritizing brands that align with their values. According to Savanta's 2023 DEI report, 31% of U.S. shoppers said they would not buy from a brand that does not demonstrate a commitment to DEI. 

Beauty consumers are no longer satisfied with token gestures of diversity. Representation, particularly in advertising, is crucial, and brands that understand this are finding success. The visibility of Black creators in the beauty industry has significantly impacted the market, shaping trends and product offerings. As Black beauty creators continue to grow in influence, the role they play in the industry has become undeniable. However, with many global team managers based in the U.S., the lack of representative teams risks stalling progress. If teams do not mirror the diversity of their consumer base, the industry could regress to its previous, exclusionary practices.

As the beauty industry faces global pressure to rollback DEI commitments, the effects are clear – fewer opportunities for Black creators, less representation in marketing, and a potential return to homogenous western beauty standards. 

The uncertainty has left Black beauty founders grappling with diminished resources. Plus, Black creators are innately disadvantaged and Black consumers have been left in the dark about the future of an industry they invest so much money in.

Despite the challenges, many Black founders remain resilient. 

“As a founder, I hold both deep concern and unwavering optimism about the future of Black-owned beauty businesses. The devastating impact of DEI rollbacks cannot be understated – we're watching opportunities disappear that took decades of work to establish, and countless brilliant founders may struggle to get their innovations to market. These setbacks are real and painful for our community. However, I remain fundamentally optimistic because I've witnessed firsthand our community's incredible resilience, creativity, and ability to innovate even in challenging circumstances. That's why maintaining and strengthening our community support systems is more important than ever.” says Malaika Jones, founder and CEO of Brown Girl Jane. 

Consumers also have a role to play. Keeping the lifecycle of the Black dollar cyclical rather than linear is crucial. The answer is to buy Black-owned. When dealing with those brands, it’s imperative to deliver critical feedback effectively: “When you have an issue try and contact the brand first. If you just bash us in the comments or take to videos, to get likes and follows, that can be extremely emotionally and financially damaging and it’s difficult to grow that way.” Imara adds, reminding us that most Black owned brands today are in fact small brands, often with limited resources, and in the growth stages. Finally, hold companies accountable for their DEI pledges, and amplifying the voices of Black founders.

DEI is a trillion dollar blindspot. If brands want global reach, they have to remember that ethnic minorities are in fact the global majorities, ignoring their global stake and their market value is not only bad math, it’s bad business. 

Wherever you sit in the ecosystem be it consumer, creator, founder, the best way to protect this industry dear to us is to uphold its commitment to diversity and innovation, and succumb to the forces dismantling DEI efforts. For now, the fight continues, but for those still in doubt – just remember, it’s always profitable to bet on Black.