Once a favourite with the Kardashian sisters, Huda Beauty’s false lashes are being pulled off the eyelids of some of Iran’s biggest influencers in protest at the billion-dollar cosmetic brand.
The company’s founder, the make-up mogul Huda Kattan, has come under fire for sharing a video of regime supporters burning pictures of the exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, but has subsequently claimed she “doesn’t know enough about the regime” to speak out.
Huda Beauty has built up a massive following for its racial inclusivity, catering to people of different skin tones. But Kattan’s posts to her five million Instagram followers, which appeared to disregard the horrors of the mass crackdown on the Iranian people, has led women across the region to destroy their Huda Beauty products and throw them in the bin.
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“I’m seeing a lot of people online right now saying, I’m pro-regime. Transparently, I’m not pro-regime. But I also don’t know enough about the regime. I’ve heard a lot of mixed things, and I don’t think I have the right to have an opinion on what’s going on in Iran,” said the entrepreneur, whose company was estimated to be worth more than $1 billion by Forbes.
Kattan was born in Oklahoma to Iraqi immigrant parents. She has been vocal over human rights issues in the past, particularly over the war in Gaza. One of her posts, a month after the Hamas-led massacres in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, said: “I am Iraqi-American. We are all Palestinian.”
Huda Kattan, right, with her sister, Mona, and the actress Eva Longoria in Abu Dhabi in 2021
CEDRIC RIBEIRO/GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL GIFT FOUNDATION
But her silence on Iran’s unrest has led her sister and co-founder of Huda Beauty, Mona, to unfollow her on Instagram, reposting content in her stories expressing solidarity with the people of Iran.
Elnaz Golrokh, a New York-based Iranian influencer, posted a video of a table full of Huda Beauty products, including the vibrant eyeshadow palettes that are a cult favourite, then showed them all smashed to pieces.
Elnaz Golrokh’s post of her destroyed Huda Beauty products
Writing to her nine million followers on Instagram, Golrokh said Kattan never supported Iranian people. “For the rest of my life, I will never use your products again,” she wrote. “I call on all Iranians to stop purchasing your products.”
A protest against Huda Beauty
The Dubai-based company sells its products everywhere from Harrods to Boots, although it is harder to purchase in Iran, with many of the products brought in from Dubai and Turkey. It is one of the largest make-up brands in the region.
The company is no stranger to controversy, most recently for its collaboration with the Palestinian singer Saint Levant for the launch of “Kalamantina” lip oil, in which Huda and Saint Levant posed in a car overflowing with clementines — at a time when Gaza was under heavy bombardment and people were starving.
“I truly do not understand how you are publishing this love song showing lots of clementines when my people of Gaza are killed while trying to get food,” the Pulitzer prizewinner Mosab Abu Toha wrote. “Do you really care about Gaza? You share this video when 102 people were killed today, including a cousin of mine, while seeking food?”
Another blog post uploaded by Huda Beauty went viral in 2018 for advising women how to lighten the colour of intimate areas by using egg white and lemon juice.
But the latest backlash appears to be her biggest challenge yet, with activists heading to Sephora stores across America and plastering labels on her products saying: “Think before purchasing: No make-up can cover up blood.”
