Her Grandmothers Taught Her Well
Born and raised in LA, she’s a Cali girl through and through. In 2017, she founded Mary Louise Cosmetics from her Howard University dorm room to bring California’s laid-back approach to skincare and empower women to redefine beauty on their own terms.
Akilah founded Mary Louise Cosmetics to fill a crucial gap in the beauty market. Growing up with her grandmother’s homespun skincare remedies, she struggled to find similar products with the same natural effectiveness. This inspired her to create her own line of all-natural, cruelty-free, vegan products specifically formulated to treat sensitive and acne-prone skin.
When it came time to name her carefully perfected formulations, the choice was obvious – Mary and Louise, the first names of the grandmothers who had passed down their timeless beauty wisdom and whose teachings she had now transformed into highly efficacious, science-backed skincare solutions.
The early success of Mary Louise presented Akilah with a choice: keep the business a side hustle or bet on herself, drop out and go all in. She chose the latter and hasn’t looked back since.