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When Abena Boamah-Acheampong (MEd ’18) was a child, her mother would heat raw shea butter and cloves in a pan for the family to use as a moisturizer or to treat minor cuts and scrapes. It was a custom her parents, who grew up in Kumasi, Ghana, before immigrating to England, and later the U.S., learned in their native country.
Now, decades later, that family tradition is being reborn in Hanahana Beauty, a “consciously clean” skin care and wellness brand that sources ingredients directly from the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative in Tamala, Ghana, and supports the cooperative by hosting medical clinics and health care talks and paying producers twice the fair-trade rate for shea butter.
For Boamah-Acheampong, Hanahana Beauty’s CEO and founder, the business’s rapid growth over the past eight years has been a thrilling ride. What began as a personal self-care project started in her Logan Square apartment has evolved into a popular skin care brand that has sold over $2 million in products, been recognized by mega-celebrities like Beyoncé, and found its way onto the shelves of some 500 Ulta Beauty stores. The skincare brand offers five fragrant body butters, lip balm, fragrance spray, body bars, an exfoliating mask, and glow cream.
Boamah-Acheampong launched the brand in 2017 while pursuing her Master of Education (MEd) in Community Counseling at the School of Education and teaching 7th-grade math at Intrinsic Charter School in Chicago’s northwest side. In the summer of that year, she took a three-week summer trip to Tamale, Ghana, to educate herself about shea butter production and chronicle the stories of women in the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative in a photo essay called “The Process.”
The trip was eye-opening, not just as a window into the time-intensive techniques involved in producing shea butter, but also as a picture of labor inequities that Boamah-Acheampong says systematically devalue raw ingredient producers. “This ingredient is in everything, and it makes a really good product. And so, we need to value the women who are creating the raw ingredients and tell their stories,” she said.
Here, Boamah-Acheampong offers seven lessons for building a mission-driven brand that honors local traditions and supports ethical practices and sustainable growth.
This ingredient is in everything, and it makes a really good product. And so, we need to value the women who are creating the raw ingredients and tell their stories.
— Abena Boamah-Acheampong , founder and CEO, Hanahana Beauty
1. Lead with your values
Boamah-Acheampong credits the Ghanaian concept of “Sankofa”— looking back to move forward—as a reflective practice that has been central to her experience at Loyola and her ability to run a mission-driven business. “Loyola was all about that … not just teaching you new things, but also asking you to go back and think about your upbringing and how it affects how you work,” she said.
From living with her grandmother in Kumasi, Ghana, from age 6 months and age 3; to engaging her Presbyterian faith, as modeled by her parent’s service as religious leaders at Ramseyer Presbyterian Church in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio; to her work as a teacher and therapist and the Ignatian values she later cultivated at Loyola, the theme of serving and uplifting communities has been a constant thread in her life and shaped her business.
“The vision I’ve had from the beginning,” Boamah-Acheampong says, “is creating products for people that have dry, sensitive skin … having Black people in mind, but making sure the product is good for everyone,” and formulating the products ethically, with the livelihoods of local producers in mind.
2. Fair prices support local economies and boost consumer goodwill
The shea tree, or vitellaria, which is indigenous to Africa, produces reddish-brown seeds that women in the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative purchase from local growers and mill, hand-churn, and boil to produce shea butter. Their work is essential to the quality of beauty products derived from seeds, but they are poorly compensated. “When they told me the price of [a finished shea butter batch], I thought, ‘this makes no sense,’” Boamah-Acheampong said. “It was under a dollar for a kilo. And I knew people were selling that same kilo on Amazon for what, at that time, was $6 to $10.”
By paying above the market rate for the locally produced shea butter, Boamah-Acheampong says she has been able to establish trust with the women of the cooperative, honor an artisan craft, and attract the interest of socially motivated consumers. “One of my big things right now is thinking about how these women create a level of profitability,” Boamah-Acheampong said. “A lot of the women like what they do, but they don’t want their children to do it because [the pricing structure] is not sustainable.”
When they told me the price of [a finished shea butter batch], I thought, ‘this makes no sense. It was under a dollar for a kilo. And I knew people were selling that same kilo on Amazon for what, at that time, was $6 to $10.
— Abena Boamah-Acheampong , founder and CEO, Hanahana Beauty
3. Storytelling and community activations can jumpstart your brand
After returning to the United States from her three-week trip to Tamale, Ghana, in June 2017, Boamah-Acheampong displayed a photo essay of the trip called “The Process,” at a series of gallery shows and pop-up events in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. She also led community activations — “yoga and chill” or “beauty and chill” events at spas and clubs — to raise brand awareness and sell Hanahana Beauty products. (Hanahana is a neologism derived from a word that means smooth and malleable in Twi, an Akan dialect spoken in parts of Ghana and Boamah-Acheampong’s first language).
These events generated buzz, which boosted online engagement and led to even more buzz. A representative from The Apple Store at 401 N. Michigan Ave. invited Boamah-Acheampong to give a talk on respectability politics. After awarding Hanahana Beauty a $50K grant as part of an initiative for black-owned beauty businesses, Glossier founder Emily Weiss invited her to a 30-minute sit-down conversation to discuss the brand’s evolution. Tennis star Serena Williams dropped a mention of Hanahana Beauty in an Instagram story, and the brand saw a bump from its listing in “Black Parade Route,” a catalog of Black- and African-owned small businesses curated by Beyoncé and fashion designer Zerina Akers.
Eventually, these milestones, along with the product’s strong reputation among customers, attracted the interest of private investors and helped Boamah-Acheampong secure a place in the Talent x Opportunity Initiative (TxO), a training and mentorship accelerator program led by the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
4. Direct-to-consumer sales can be more lucrative than big-box store placements
Landing your product in a big box retailer can be exciting, but owners should be aware of the hidden costs. “When the product gets in the store, it is on you to market it,” Boamah-Acheampong says. That can be difficult when you’re up against competitors with large marketing teams and big pockets—the Revlon’s and L’Oréal’s of the world. “A lot of your money ends up going to inventory. Instead of, maybe, making 2000 units at a time for one stock keeping unit (sku), you’re having to make 11,000 units. And then they’re on the shelves, but now you have to sell it off the shelves too.”
Direct-to-consumer sales, while arguably less glamorous, are often more lucrative and can make it easier for a brand to align their production levels with sudden shifts in demand.
5. Authentic community impact must be collaborative, not imposed
From 2018-2020, Boamah-Acheampong spent seven months each year in Ghana. In collaboration with Nathaniel Gyasi, a nurse and health care coordinator, she interviewed women of the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative to understand their needs holistically. Many told her they could not afford to see a doctor or did not trust the local medical system.
This led Hanahana Beauty to establish a foundation that works with area doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to offer community health care days every six months. During these events, women receive medical checkups, vaccinations for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, and blood pressure and breast cancer screenings. “I visited there, and they treated Abena like an angel,” said her father Kwabena Boamah-Acheampong, who observed a clinic several years ago. “They all gather around her, and you can just feel the joy when you go to see the women.”
6. Consider your core customers as ‘micro-influencers’
Hanahana Beauty targets much of its marketing efforts toward women of childbearing age, because “they’re also usually the influencer in their group chat. They’re the spreaders,” Boamah-Acheampong said. “We’ve had customers that started with us when they were 26, then they had a kid; now they use the product with their kid. Now their husband uses it.”
Even still, Boamah-Acheampong is intentional about including men in Hanahana Beauty’s marketing materials, and not just for the optics of equity. With notions of masculinity shifting and a report in CNN Style noting a “389% year-on-year increase in TikTok video views around male skincare,” men have influence in the grooming space, too, even if some are reluctant to be its vocal ambassadors. “Some men will say, ‘I don’t know if I should use this.’ I’m like, ‘Do you shower? Do you have skin? Do you want to be moisturized? I don’t think people want dry skin,” Boamah-Acheampong said.
7. Take care of yourself to take care of your business
For years, Hanahana Beauty focused on rapid growth. But the round-the-clock demands of being a founder and CEO took its toll on Boamah-Acheampong. “It was a lot of pressure … I feel like a lot of founders, especially women founders, reflect back and think, “oh my gosh. I was a people pleaser. I was just trying to make everyone happy,” she said.
When her grandmother died in 2023, she knew she needed to reset her business and personal priorities. She downsized her staff, immersed herself in her Christian faith, and started practicing the Pomodoro technique, a time-management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s that divides work into 30-minute intervals punctuated by five-minute breaks. “Let’s not just idolize impact,” she said. “Think about it strategically. How about yourself? Are you drowning? At the end of the day, it is just a business. You are an entire human being.”
