Sisters Huda, Mona and Alya. Huda says the true secret to beauty is happiness
It is has not even been half an hour since Huda Heidi Kattan put up a video tutorial on how to get those perfect cat eyes on her Instagram account, and it already has over 18,000 likes, but then she has almost seven million followers. The Tennessee-born, Iraqi style icon, who now lives in Dubai, is one of top 10 beauty bloggers in the world. Huda Beauty, born in Dubai, is a casebook study on how social media can turn your passion into a business. And now her business is poised to go international.
It all started when Huda was just 14 years old. Her elder sister Alya was in her 20s by then, and was already a beauty addict. Teenaged Huda would love watching her dress up. “I was already shaping her and her friends’ eyebrows by that age.” And then while studying finance at the University of Michigan, Huda regularly curated broadcast emails to her friends and family on all the new beauty products she was trying out.
Huda first came to the Middle East in 2003 and at that time was based in Sharjah. Her parents had relocated here, but it was not love at first sight for her. Huda returned to the United States after a few months and only came back in 2008 after she was married. Working at DIFC in finance recruitment, she kept up with social media updates on beauty. Two years later, she decided it was time to turn her passion into a business.
It was her younger sister, Mona, who also runs Doll’s House, a successful salon chain in Dubai, who suggested she startwww.hudabeauty.com, which today boasts 9,000 views a day. The three sisters work together at Huda Beauty.
