Tabitha Brown is taking on the behemoth toxic hair care industry with Donna’s Recipe, her clean, vegan hair care line designed for textured hair.
Our relationship with our hair has always been complicated, especially for women. Since ancient times, women have used oils and waxes, even animal fat, to protect their hair from the elements and make it easier to manage and style. Daily hairwashing only became a popular trend at the beginning of the 20th century — and that just added to the issues women had already been battling. Modern shampoos and hair styling products stripped the natural oils from the hair and scalp, leaving hair dry and frizzy, requiring more products and treatments.
Fast forward a century and hair care is a booming industry, surpassing $93 billion last year, according to Statista. It’s an industry largely built on keeping women in a vicious, expensive, and often ineffective cycle of overwashing and excessively moisturizing on top of the coloring and styling.
The problem? Most of the hair care products available today contain synthetic and harmful chemicals, and that’s especially true for textured hair care products aimed at women. “Those with textured hair suffer from a gap in the industry of better-suited and researched products for their hair type,” Gina Woods, co-founder of Donna’s Recipe, the hair care brand she started alongside mogul Tabitha Brown, told Ethos via email.
Last year, the FDA said it was planning to ban hair straighteners that contain formaldehyde, a known carcinogen in products often marketed to Black women. Health experts have been sounding the alarm on hair care products marketed to Black women for years. Products including relaxers, perms, hair gels, and lotions can contain formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals linked to metabolic and cardiovascular issues as well as increased risks of some forms of cancer.
“There’s a whole history of hair and hair care in the Black community, and some of it stems from issues of racism and discrimination against how women wear their hair and what’s considered a professional hairstyle in office settings, for example, or in school,” Dr. Kimberly Bertrand, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, told ABC News last year.
But the FDA delayed plans to enact the proposed ban. It earned criticism from organizations like the Environmental Working Group. “The FDA’s continued delays in banning formaldehyde in hair-straightening products are a disgrace. After nearly a decade of empty promises, the agency has failed once again to protect salon workers and consumers from exposure to this well-documented carcinogen,” Melanie Benesh, EWG’s vice president of government affairs, said in a statement last month.
Finding a healthy way to care for her hair motivated Brown to launch Donna’s Recipe (Donna is the name Brown gave to her hair). Brown told Ethos that after suffering from chronic headaches and other health issues for nearly two years, she went vegan in 2017. “In the same year, I did a big chop and cut Donna off and had less than an inch left,” Brown says. She was letting Donna grow, but because of a car accident when she was in high school, stenosis in her neck requires Brown to sometimes sleep flat on her back. “In 2018 my hair in the back of my head began to thin,” she says. “In search of a product to help grow my hair back I began reading ingredients and was concerned with many that I read. I started trying to create my own hair products with vegan ingredients, and months later my entrepreneurial friend (Woods) came to me with the idea of a vegan hair care line,” Brown says. “It was an answered prayer as I couldn’t do it alone. Just like that, Donna’s Recipe was born.”
Donna’s Recipe, like its founder, has been a huge success. It’s now available in Ulta and Target stores nationwide. At Target, it builds on Brown’s already popular food and lifestyle collection with the retail giant. (In addition to her Target line, Brown has a partnership with McCormick Spices, she’s a best-selling author, a restaurateur — and last year, she won her first Children’s & Family Emmy for Outstanding Host of the show “Tab Time.”)
But even with her busy schedule, Brown says making Donna’s Recipe happen was important. “It’s a gift of a happier, healthier, consistent hair routine for everyone.” And she says, “It’s also part of my story.” Brown says with Woods’ 15-plus-year track record of creating and developing successful beauty brands, the two synced together to bring Donna’s Recipe to life. “When I take on a new project it’s always in alignment with my truth and it tells a story. It was a need that I personally had for myself and also Donna had become a brand all on her own, people were asking for a Donna product, so it made sense,” Brown says. “When you have a vision and passion for something, no matter how crazy it sounds to others, you focus and make the time.”
The range includes the hero ingredient sweet potatoes in the shampoo, hair cream, and leave-in conditioner. It also features a hair oil and biotin gummies — all designed to address textured hair challenges like breakage, frizz, knots, tangles, and dryness, but without the harsh chemicals in most textured hair care products.
Woods says Donna’s Recipe’s Sweet Potato Pie collection is made to be like “dessert for your hair” because it’s formulated with trusted and unconventional natural ingredients. “Sweet potatoes are a good plant source of biotin (an essential nutrient), to promote hair growth and thicken the hair shaft,” Woods says. Beyond the sweet potato, there’s cinnamon, vanilla, and shea butter. “Cinnamon removes build-up from the scalp for healthy follicles, while vanilla is rich in minerals to stimulate blood circulation to the scalp to aid hair growth. Shea butter moisturizes and conditions for smoother and softer feeling hair.” The leave-in conditioner is formulated to boost moisture, leaving the hair feeling soft, silky, and manageable, Woods says. “We credit this to the ultimate recipe of nutrient-rich ingredients for luscious locks which includes sweet potato, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar maple sap, lemon juice, almond, and avocado oils, as well as shea, cocoa, and mango butters. Sugar maple sap has a high sugar content which gives the formula humectant properties to keep the hair hydrated, conditioned, and soft.”
The products are now in 600 Target stores and Woods says the Strength Hair Oil is a best-seller for the retailer, something she says emphasizes consumer willingness to “invest in quality, effective products free from detrimental additives.” Brown and Woods credit the brand’s success to their fans whom they call “Donna’s Cousins.” Woods says the fans have been vocal and have expressed “a strong desire on social media” for wider availability of the brand in Target stores nationwide. The brand has garnered more than 7,300 five-star reviews since its launch in 2021.
At a Donna’s Recipe kick-off event at an Ulta store in Los Angeles last year, the Cousins were lined up around the parking lot, waiting hours for an opportunity to take photos with Brown and sample the products. And Brown was as excited about all of it as her fans were. “I am so grateful for the support I receive from my fans, and that alone makes me excited to hug and love on each and everyone of them,” she says. “Everyone’s energy is contagious, and it fuels me. People showing up to meet me is a gift, and I’ve been so blessed to build a fan base that feels like family. It’s a special blessing to connect with everyone in real life.”
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