Liha beauty

Liha beauty is based in Cheltenham and Hackney and the directors are Liha Okunniwa & Abi Oyepitan. I’m Liha, and a Gloucestershire girl born and bred. Abi is a Londoner through and through.

Our beauty products are natural, 100% vegan, cruelty free and free from parabens, sls and chemicals.

Handmade in small batches in Cheltenham and Hackney. We also offer workshops teaching how to create natural beauty products for yourself.

Our Story

We met at University 18 years ago and have been close ever since. Whilst Abi was travelling the world as a professional athlete, competing in two Olympic games, I was setting up an art publishing business and living the quiet (ish) life raising my daughter. We would often meet in London, or sometimes if she happened to be warm weather training and I had a trade show to go to, somewhere a bit sunnier.

As a couple of beauty junkies the conversation would always come back to what all-natural products we were using. Hair care tips. What beauty uses we had discovered for our kitchen cupboard ingredients. I would try and talk her into moving out to the sticks. She would try and convince me to go to the city. We would talk about all the stuff we were juggling as women. We supported each other through two Masters degrees (Politics for her, Museum Studies for me). Love troubles, career changes, and all the other challenges that you need friends for.

Then in 2015 something amazing happened. A product we had been toying with for a while and sending back and forth to each other kept going missing from our bathroom shelves. We were getting rave reviews from every overnight guest and requests for full size bottles from the pickiest of our friends. So we’ve finally decided to do it. We are starting really small with just two of the products we love the most.

Wild crafted, cold pressed, small batch

In the Yoruba tradition making beautifying oils, soaps and lotions from the nuts, tree bark and plants that grew in abundance was a skill that was traditionally learned by all young women. As the diaspora spread to places like Brazil, Cuba, New Orleans and Great Britain, these recipes have been worked and reworked time and time again with new twists, always relying on the natural bases that form the LIHA range – Coconut and Shea Butter.