Eight-year-old Angel Dover walked quietly in with her mother to her job as a Mary Kay consultant. While Dover sat beside her mother, her team decided to test their new foundation line on her. She sat in the chair as consultants blended different shades on her face, testing out different foundations. Dover was her mother’s best friend and personal guinea pig when it came to her makeup abilities. Her mother’s team tested different shades of foundation to match Dover’s dark skin.
A makeup artist who has worked almost every fashion week in New York, Paris and London — whose looks have graced the pages of Vogue and whose makeup brushes have touched celebrities like Saweetie and Winnie Harlow — found her pinnacle moment not on a runway but in her mother’s salon as a test dummy for new foundation shades.
At that time, when Dover was eight years old, the line they newly created didn’t have her shades, so the team tested out a variety of shades until they found the perfect one. They went back and forth until they found the shade: Mary Kay matte number seven.
“I’ll never forget it—they matched that to me, and I fell in love,” Dover said to me. As someone with acne-prone skin at a young age, Dover immediately fell in love with the foundation that sat smoothly on her face.
Years went by, and Dover was glued to her screens, watching makeup tutorials on YouTube to hone her own makeup skills, experimenting on herself and transforming friends for graduation photos.
Soon, she invested the little money she had into her makeup kit, which became her side hustle in high school. That led to Dover’s career in the makeup industry. After working at Sephora, she launched her own line, Adorea Beauty.
Dover’s passion for makeup wasn’t just about artistry; she fell in love with beautifying women.
Soon after, other Black women in the beauty industry would develop the same passion, including influencers like Golloria George, who took to social media to challenge the industry’s so-called inclusivity. In October 2024, George turned her platform into a testing ground for some of the beauty industry’s biggest names.
In swatching foundation on her dark skin and then blending different-coloured blushes on her cheekbones, she challenged the promise of inclusive shade ranges. YSL, Rhode, and Youthforia each fell short in ways that sparked frustration not just for her but for the many Black women viewing her reviews on TikTok.
George’s reviews critiqued what she was looking for, and what followed wasn’t just a debate over makeup. The backlash was swift and brutal, with hate-fueled comments flooding her mentions. What should have been an honest discussion about shade ranges and representation spiralled into yet another reminder of how the beauty industry often sidelines Black voices.
Despite brands championing diversity in their marketing, the reality remains stark — Black consumers in both the U.S. and Canada still face barriers that their non-Black counterparts seldom encounter. A report by McKinsey and Company highlights the disparity — while Black individuals make up 12.4 percent of the entire U.S. population, Black-owned beauty brands account for just four to seven percent of those found in retail stores. The numbers tell a familiar story: there are discrepancies in access to makeup across certain groups.
A report from The Jaguardian suggests that increasing the number of Black-owned beauty brands could add $2.6 billion in market value, an expansion that wouldn’t just uplift Black entrepreneurs but also create space for other minority-owned brands.
The numbers reflect the demand—in 2021 alone, Black consumers spent a staggering $6.6 billion on beauty products, accounting for 11.1 percent of total U.S. sales. Yet, despite their undeniable influence on trends and purchasing power, Black consumers remain underrepresented on store shelves.
Dr. Darcy Ballantyne, a Toronto Metropolitan University Black Arts professor, drew a powerful link between the struggles of Black beauty entrepreneurs today and those who paved the way before them. She pointed to Viola Desmond—not just a civil rights icon but also a businesswoman who owned Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture in Halifax.
Despite her ambition, Desmond was denied the opportunity to attend beauty school alongside her white peers, a barrier that echoes the challenges Black beauty professionals still face in gaining access to education and industry spaces today. “All of the roadblocks that were put in her way are still in the way of Black entrepreneurs,” Ballantyne said to me.
Victoria Ezike knows the feeling all too well. As the leading founder of Beauty with Vee, Ezike started her journey in the beauty industry seven years ago in her bedroom. Ezeke wasn’t always the makeup type. In fact, she stumbled into the beauty world by accident back in 2013, during the early days of YouTube’s beauty room.
Armed with a basic phone camera and quiet determination, she began practicing makeup looks online and started recording and uploading her videos — not for fame or followers, but for fun. Soon she was posting on her Instagram account, and people were very impressed with the looks she created. “I had people start messaging me, like, ‘Hey, do you do makeup on other people?’ Ezeke said.
Instagram became her digital portfolio. Each post was a snapshot of progress, and with experience, she got better and better. She enlisted her mom and sister as models. She tried out new looks on her friends too, experimenting with colours, sometimes clashing, sometimes harmonizing, until she found her style. The likes, comments, and reposts followed. Publicity hit. Then came her first client.
“It was so unreal,” she said to me, her voice softened with memory. “I was excited just to do the makeup,” she added, letting out a soft chuckle. She was so eager in those early days that she would travel across the city just to meet clients where they were.
Ezike spoke about makeup with the kind of precision usually reserved for painters. “It’s important as an artist to understand how different colours interact with each other,” she said.
Colour theory, for her, is practical. Foundational.
Working with a diverse clientele taught her that not every trend works on every skin tone. She pointed to the bubblegum-pink blush trend that swept social media a few months ago. “For someone with a deeper skin tone, you need to use a different shade of pink,” she said. “Something with a rich base, rather than a white or pink.”
“Those little differences are overlooked,” Ezeke added. It’s the kind of nuance that differentiates an artist from someone who is a makeup enthusiast who ‘hops on every trend.’
Ezeke’s attention to undertones and representation speaks to a larger issue in the beauty world.
Sahra Elmi points out in an article how beauty industries, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, center light skin and straight hair as the standard. This Eurocentric ideal dominates advertising and media, often leaving little room for women of colour to see themselves reflected in mainstream beauty spaces.
Special effects makeup artist Melissa Itwar understands the importance of colour theory and took her school very seriously as a makeup artist. Itwar is the founder and business owner of a makeup company, Melissa Itwar Artistry, in Toronto.
As she started her makeup career at Canadian Beauty College in 2018, Itwar was juggling school, rent, and bills while also working at a busy restaurant.
“I’d leave school on Friday, go work dinner service, then wake up Saturday, work lunch service, and do the same things Sunday, then go back to school Monday,” she said.
Itwar’s hard work has led her to major moments in her career. “I had a Black actress come into the makeup room, and upon seeing that I was a woman of colour, she got emotional.
“It’s not just with Black women; I get that with brown women and East Asian women as well,” she added. Having a makeup artist who won’t make you look ashy or cakey and who knows how to work with your skin is something that Black and brown women are looking for.
Itwar says she was fortunate to have a Black instructor in her program. Her instructor taught her techniques tailored to her struggles as a woman of colour. “As a woman of colour, I have a lot of hyperpigmentation on my chin, and she [her instructor] decided to make a lesson out of how to colour-correct my chin,” Itwar said.
She mentioned how different the experience can be for dark-skinned individuals when they are included on TV. Itwar was told to do the makeup of a Black actress for a movie trailer. The woman had tattoos that needed to be covered and hyperpigmentation. “Can you have her ready in 18 minutes?” they said to Itwar. “Do not disrespect her,” she responded.
Frustrated, Itwar walked away from that production. She watched the finished product, and the makeup was awful. The scene was the woman sitting down in front of a computer, and she turned it on. “When the monitor turns on, you can see the white cast and heavy contour,” Itwar says with disappointment in her tone.
She mentioned how we only really notice it when we’re going through it, and that there’s a lack of skill and education in the industry.
Yethia Tshiamala brought another perspective into focus, one shaped by her role as a beauty advisor at Sephora. In her role, Tshiamala works closely with clients, recommending products across categories like makeup, skincare, haircare, and fragrances, all tailored to individual needs and preferences.
While she was working toward her chemistry degree, her journey into the beauty world began a year ago, fueled by her growing passion for skincare.
Working at Sephora has exposed her to both the progress and the gaps in representation. “Many people of colour have complained that they can’t find their foundation shades at beauty stores because there wasn’t anyone that could represent them,” she said to me.
She pointed to a small but significant marker used in Sephora stores, a little green stamp labelled “BIPOC Owned,” curving around a tan background with a cluster of different-colored hearts. The label identifies brands owned by Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, offering customers a quick visual cue to support underrepresented creators.
Tshiamala said Sephora places a strong emphasis on accurate shade matching, especially for clients with deeper complexions.
It’s important to include all skin tones and skin types when discussing makeup products. Having these conversations with makeup artists and people in the industry does help, and it’s getting better as we continue to speak up.