Three Black beauty founders reflect on what June 19th means to their work, their heritage, and the communities they are building one product at a time.
June 19, 1865 is the date most Americans now know as the anchor of Juneteenth. That afternoon in Galveston, Texas, enslaved people learned what had already been law for two and a half years: they were free. More than 160 years later, the day carries both the weight of that delayed reckoning and the forward momentum of what Black Americans have built since.
In the beauty industry, that building has been deliberate and significant. Black entrepreneurs have carved out space in an industry that long ignored them, founding brands rooted in heritage, quality, and the kind of representation that was not coming from anyone else. This Juneteenth, three of those founders share what the day means to them and why it connects to the work they show up to do every morning.
Juneteenth and the act of creation
Mary Imevbore launched The Weave, a brand offering luxurious synthetic and human hair products including wigs, as an expression of cultural identity as much as a business. A first-generation American of Nigerian descent, she did not grow up celebrating Juneteenth. Over time, she found her own relationship to it.
For Imevbore, that relationship runs through entrepreneurship itself. Creation, she says, is a form of healing. The roadblocks her ancestors navigated did not stop them, and that same refusal to stop is what drives her work. The Weave is not just a hair brand; it is a continuation of something longer.
Building equity into the foundation
Nyakio Grieco co-founded Thirteen Lune with a specific problem in mind. The e-commerce platform was designed to center beauty brands built by Black and Brown entrepreneurs, giving those founders visibility in a marketplace that had historically pushed them to the margins.
Grieco won Newcomer of the Year in 2021, but the recognition she tends to talk about most is the kind that happens inside a community. Her view of Juneteenth carries a communal logic: freedom is not something one person or one brand achieves alone. The work of building a more equitable beauty landscape is shared, and June 19th is a useful moment to measure how far that work has come and how far it still has to go.
Learning late and leading anyway
Ciara Imani May, CEO and founder of Rebundle, came to Juneteenth later in life than many people do. She is open about that gap in her education and treats it as part of why she now speaks about empowerment and community so directly through her brand.
Rebundle focuses on quality hair products alongside education about hair care, a pairing that reflects May’s belief that information and access belong together. She points to figures like Michelle Obama and Malcolm X as touchstones for how she thinks about leadership. What connects them, in her view, is the understanding that showing up for a community is not optional. It is the whole point.
What the day asks of the industry
Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, but the beauty industry’s relationship to Black consumers and Black founders remains uneven. The brands these three women have built are part of a correction, not a conclusion. Their presence in the market is meaningful, but it exists alongside ongoing challenges around funding, shelf space, and the kind of institutional support that remains easier to access for others.
What Imevbore, Grieco, and May share is a refusal to wait for those conditions to change on their own. They are building the thing they want to exist, and they are doing it with a clarity about what June 19th represents that shapes their work year-round, not just on the day itself.
The beauty industry is better for their presence. The story of Juneteenth is, in part, a story about what people build once the door opens.
