The Beauty Muse: Mona Kattan

We’ve been following Mona’s inspiring journey from the very beginnings of brand Huda Beauty, pre-eyelash launch, in fact, we can go as far to say we’ve been there from the start. We hit like on her very first Instagram post, a selfie, cheekily captioned ‘Mirror Face’, tagging her sister Huda, back in 2012. Today, she’s the global president of brand Huda Beauty, has a cult following of 1.8 million on Instagram and has recently spearheaded the launch of Kayali, a new fragrance line and pillar to the Huda beauty empire. In this exclusive interview with Emirates Woman Mona opens up on what it’s like running a family business, her first fragrance memories and the journey to Kayali

What does Kayali mean?

It’s pronounced Keeyah-li, and it means my imagination. We chose this name because we really feel that fragrance has a lot to do with imagination and emotions. People can really use fragrance to create memories and also go back to old memories and emotions.

How involved where you in creating the fragrances?

Very involved. It was kind of more my navy. Huda helped a lot, and she was super involved in the creative aspect and packaging the bottles, but in terms of the development and finding the manufacturers, and all the resources, hiring our team etc, I kind of went ahead with this project.

So, you have a separate team that works for this project?

Yes, we have a separate development manager and we are now building the rest of the team as well. We just hired a director of branding communications, they haven’t joined yet but we are working on filling the rest of the team. Our manager is amazing and she does so much.

Do you have an all-female team?

Yes, but not on purpose. We just happen to find really incredible women.

What inspired you to create a fragrance?