Frustrated by a lack of pregnancy-safe natural skincare products — ones as luxurious as those she’d religiously purchased prior to falling pregnant — Emma Lewisham set about creating her own. Not only would her eponymous line use science-backed, naturally derived ingredients, it would also be carbon-positive, with offsets outweighing emissions.
Since the brand’s launch in 2019, the 38-year-old New Zealand native has made significant inroads both in terms of company growth and environmental impact. Her sustainable Circular Beauty initiative has helped Emma Lewisham earn B Corp certification (almost all containers can be returned to the company and either refilled or recycled), and in the past financial year, sales in Australia increased by 99 per cent. In part, that’s due to the brand’s Mecca debut — it was one of the beauty retailer’s most successful skincare launches of 2022. All of which suggests that customers appreciate the founder’s focus, which, Lewisham says, is always about skin, not “ingredients or what’s trending”.
So what’s next? The former corporate executive says she wants to help set more realistic beauty standards. “Beautiful skin isn’t about perfection,” she says. “It’s having confidence and the skin being as healthy as it can be — for you. That’s the message that we champion and I feel really passionate about.”
