Is Your Skincare Routine Anti-Black?
Every year around this time, someone posts a skincare roundup.
Same five brands. Same Sephora staples. Same routine that was built, tested, and photographed on skin that is not yours, dressed up as universal.
You saved it anyway. Tried two of them. One broke you out. One did nothing. You returned to your regular moisturiser as if nothing had happened.
We are not doing that to you today.
These twelve brands were built by Black founders across four continents, for skin that gets ashy, that hyperpigments in June and spends September paying for it, that has been navigating a beauty industry that treated it as a niche since forever.
Spring is here. What you put on your face in April decides what it looks like in August.
Here is the list that was actually made for you.
Save these brands to your wishlist as you read — you'll want to come back.
01 — Start here
SPF first. Non-negotiable.
Hyperpigmentation does not develop in August; it starts now, quietly, every time you step outside without protection. Everything else in this list is working against what unprotected UV silently undoes.
Black Girl Sunscreen us
Katonya Breaux launched Black Girl Sunscreen in 2016 because broad-spectrum protection without a white cast did not exist on the mainstream market. It does now. Avocado, jojoba, sunflower oil. SPF 30, completely clear, no residue, no ghostly finish, no argument. If you have been skipping sunscreen because it sits wrong on your skin, this brand retired that excuse eight years ago.
Dang! Lifestyle 🇳🇬
Ifedayo Agoro built Dang! for skin that deals with West African UV, harmattan dryness, and heat that takes no days off. The SPF 50 water-based gel is transparent and fast-absorbing, whether you are in Abuja or Amsterdam. Over 100,000 customers. Ships internationally. Available while most SPF brands are still working out how to acknowledge that darker skin tones exist.
ROSE Ingleton MD 🇯🇲 🇺🇸
Dr Rose Ingleton was the first Black woman to complete her dermatology residency programme. Twenty-five years treating skin of colour. When the retailers told her they did not serve that market, she built her own. Jamaican SuperFruit; morinda, june plum, soursop, meets clinical-grade actives. The SPF drops disappear on contact. At Sephora. No excuses left for any of us.
02 — Treatment
Deal with the dark spots.
Spring UV is writing summer hyperpigmentation in real time. These brands are already working against it.
Topicals 🇺🇸
Olamide Olowe built Topicals because skincare for hyperpigmentation kept arriving in one of two ways: clinical and cold, or colourful and useless. Faded serum is genuinely both effective and something you actually want to put on your face. The brand normalises skin conditions rather than pathologising them. That is not a marketing line. It is a position.
EADEM 🇺🇸 | On MBG
Here is something most dark spot serums will not tell you: the clinical studies that validated their formulas were run on lighter skin tones. The results were assumed to transfer. Marie Kouadio and Alice Lin built EADEM because they got tired of that assumption. Their Smart Melanin™ technology was developed for melanated skin specifically. Not adapted. Not revised. Built from the ground up for the skin it is sitting on. The Milk Marvel Dark Spot Serum is the proof.
Add EADEM to Your Free Wishlist on MBG Now →
Serumize 🇨🇦
Elizabeth Shabi is a biochemist and medical aesthetician with 36,000 client hours behind her. Serumize exists because she watched people spend money on overcomplicated routines that underdelivered consistently. Gender-neutral, science-led, stripped to what actually works. This is the brand you find before it goes everywhere, and then feel very smug about when it does.
03 — Retinol window
Spring is the right moment.
Before peak summer UV arrives. This is your window.
Shani Darden 🇺🇸
Most retinol brands will not tell you that retinol on deeper skin tones can trigger post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, the very thing you were trying to fix. Shani Darden, facialist to Zendaya and Kelly Rowland, built Retinol Reform around that specific problem. Spring, before peak summer sun, is the right moment to introduce it. The wrong product in the right season still costs you. This is the right product.
Found brands you want? Save them to your MBG wishlist and come back when you're ready to shop.
04 — Full body
Your body is skin too.
A perfect face routine and absolutely nothing from the neck down. These three brands close that gap
Epara 🇬🇧 🇳🇬 | On MBG
Ozohu Adoh created Epara in London after failing to find luxury skincare that understood darker skin. African botanicals, cotton thistle, liquorice root, apricot kernel, UK-manufactured to the same standard as anything behind a designer counter. Won Best New Product for Dark Skin at Grazia's Beauty Awards in its first year. The Nourishing Body Oil is where you start.
Add Epara Skincare to Your Free Wishlist on MBG Now
LIHA Beauty 🇬🇧 🇳🇬 | On MBG
Liha Okunniwa and Abi Oyepitan built LIHA at the intersection of Nigerian tradition and British aromatherapy. Idan Oil works everywhere, body, hair, scalp, face, and smells like something you would pay significantly more for if the jar said something French on it. You buy it for yourself. You end up giving it as a gift because you cannot stop recommending it.
Add Liha to Your Free Wishlist on MBG Now
Dibia 🇬🇧 🇳🇬 | On MBG
Ike Muotoh is a graphic designer in London. He is also a skincare founder because he could not find a moisturiser that was deeply hydrating, non-greasy, and worth smelling, so he taught himself aromatherapy and made one in 2021. The whipped shea butter in Patchouli and Cedarwood absorbs completely and lingers all day. A man built this because the market left him out, too.
Add Dibia to Your Free Wishlist on MBG Now →
05 — You'd Love These Too
The brands most lists haven't found yet.
BU.KE 🇰🇪
Lucy Kingori started BU.KE in Nairobi in 2014. No press moment. No investor deck. Just clean skincare using what the Kenyan landscape actually grows. Ten years later, it is the first brand in the world to harness Kenyan Purple Tea in skincare formulations, validated by the Tea Research Foundation and the Tea Board of Kenya. The CLARI-Tea brightening mask is the discovery of this entire list. It was always A-Beauty. We just were not paying attention.
Lelive 🇿🇦 | On MBG
Amanda du Pont named Lelive after her Swazi name, meaning "of the nation or the world." It sold out immediately in 2020 and has been restocking to a loyal community ever since. Bakuchiol instead of retinol. Turmeric. Recyclable aluminium. Affordable in the way things that actually work for everyone should be, not just for the people mainstream beauty remembers.
Add Lelive to Your Free Wishlist on MBG Now →
The industry has been profiting from Black skin since the beginning. These twelve brands are what it looks like when the people who actually understand it start getting paid for knowing it best.
Your spring/summer routine is here. Build it properly.
Find every brand in the MBG directory. Create your free account to save brands, build wishlists, and discover what's new every month in Beauty.
Was this Helpful?