Model Entrepreneur

Elizabeth Isiorho is ramping up her modeling business to provide more young people international opportunities and put African beauty on the map.

- Peace Hyde

Covid-19 may have shaken the very foundation of global fashion, but the one thing that has stayed is the focus on Africa as the world’s resource hub for the creative industry, with its surging youth dividend and gifted talent pool. Nigerian entrepreneur and former beauty queen

Elizabeth Isiorho knows this only too well, as she takes her business to the next stage, now launching Future Face Africa, which she hopes will be a pan-African talent search to discover more African faces to showcase to the rest of the world.

Her modeling agency, Beth Model Management Africa, has been at the forefront of this quest, since 2004, to provide a platform for African models abroad.

“Models will be given a chance to win a two-year international modeling contract with a top modeling agency, offering hopefuls not just a launchpad but a career on the world stage,” she says in an interview with FORBES AFRICA over Zoom from London in May.

Isiorho herself had her breakthrough in the industry with the international agency, Elite Model Management. But first, a look back at how it all began.

Growing up, Isiorho was influenced by her mother, a veteran in the Nigerian entertainment industry and die-hard fashion lover who always told her daughter she resembled supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Who knew then that Isiorho would become friends with Campbell several years later and follow in her role model’s footsteps?

While African fashion and beauty is now celebrated abroad, this was not the case when Isiorho first started. Modeling had several negative perceptions in Africa that she needed to break.