Its high fatty acid and vitamin content makes shea butter much more effective than your regular moisturizer. In its purest form, shea butter is a nutritious addition to your skincare routine that gives your body a dose of vitamins A and E — making it full of antioxidants — and acids like linoleic, oleic, stearic, and palmitic acids keep your skin moisturized all day.*
But not all shea butters are created equal.
Hanahana Beauty has become a cult-favorite small beauty brand for its high quality shea butters that will make every other brand suddenly become irrelevant.
Their original product, their whipped Unscented Shea Body Butter, should come with a "do not eat" label. The sumptuous texture, faint earthy smell, and the surprising lightness makes for a whipped cream-like consistency that goes onto your skin like butter — without leaving you looking greasy or feeling heavy.
The original iteration was so popular that they made multiple different versions with even more delicious-sounding scents like "Amber Vanilla," "Bamboo Coconut," "Lavender Vanilla," and more. These body butters have become staples for any shea butter stan who values craft and quality.
It's no coincidence that Hanahana Beauty Shea Butters are so effective, since they were made to, according to their website, "consciously clean skincare + wellness brand whose mission is to disrupt the global beauty industry." Their mission is to provide quality products that make you feel comfortable in your skin, while also increasing "accessibility, transparency, and sustainability in all aspects of what [they] create."
The founder, Abena Boamah-Acheampong, was searching for high quality ingredients from transparent brands, and, identifying a gap in the market, made her own. Any shea butter aficionado will know the struggle of buying store-bought shea products. Good shea butter, as a natural ingredient, can go rancid if not treated well, but many preservatives are used as filler in off the counter brands. And some brands which list shea butter as an ingredient barely contain enough to really reap the benefits.
Boamah-Acheampong is also passionate about fair trade and staying connected to the roots of production. Drawing from her mother's childhood reliance on shea butter, she partners with female artisans in Ghana to uplift, support, and promote them by immersing herself in the community while guaranteeing the best ingredients.
"We simply want women to feel smooth and confident in their own skin," says the Hanahana Beauty website, "while being able to dismiss popular beauty standards and free their way of thinking."
In their quest to make women feel confident and provide quality, innovative ingredients, they are reinventing how we think about moisturization. More than transforming what we expect from shea butter, they are turning to other aspects of skincare and the beauty industry.
Their new offerings are breaking boundaries by being clean, natural, and effective — with their cult-like audience growing as more and more people make the switch to Hanahana Beauty.
Their new products include their first venture into skincare on the face: The Skin Nutrition is their new kaolin clay mask which detoxifies and gives back rich nutrients to your skin.
In addition, Hanahana's new star product is also an innovative, industry-shaking product: the 2-in-1 Body Bar which exfoliates and moisturizes your skin.
The 2-in-1 Body Bar is unlike any other product on the market right now. It's a bar of shea butter, brown sugar, cocoa butter, and avocado oil that you use in your shower — but don't call it a soap. After your shower, skip the water-based lotion and rub this body bar over your still-wet skin to release the oils and moisturize while exfoliating.
As sustainability becomes more and more prominent in daily purchasing decisions, people are turning to items like shampoo bars and body wash bars to minimize the impact of plastic containers. The Hanahana Beauty 2-in-1 Body Bar speaks to that trend in a new way.
Its versatility also makes it ideal for travel. No more pouring out your lotion into travel-friendly bottles, getting your moisturizers thrown out at TSA, or letting a bulky moisturizer take up space in your luggage. ThisBody Bar is the perfect addition to your skincare bag since it's superior to most moisturizers, with the added benefit of convenience.
The 2-in-1 Body Bar combined with the Shea Body Butter make for an intense moisturizing duo, so you don't have to sacrifice skincare as you travel — but you also don't have to endure the hassle.
Every new product by Hanahana Beauty makes us excited to see what they'll do next. Their goal to innovate the industry has already wrought some incredible products with surprising uses, blessing us with the products we deserve but didn't even know to ask for.