Aleph Beauty is a clean beauty brand founded by pro makeup artist Emma Peters in 2018. Her three decades of hands-on set experience set Aleph Beauty apart from other clean beauty brands. She came from sets where makeup had to perform under the harshest conditions while understanding what real people wanted when they looked in the mirror. In this piece, Peters shares her story of how she began the brand, built products for the less-is-more woman, and grew with intention as an independent beauty brand.
Peters worked for three decades across film, fashion, TV, weddings, and personal clients. She began getting intimate with the products she placed on clients’ faces daily by studying what was actually in cosmetics. She had clients looking for clean beauty products that worked in high-performance and everyday use. She started pulling together bits and pieces from different ranges and brands. Each product had to be clean enough and functional enough to recommend to her clients.
“Along the way, I became really passionate about health and wellness,” Peters explains. “I studied different modalities just for fun, and I’d been talking to people about ingredients and what they should and shouldn’t be eating, how to read food labels. Then I realized, ‘Well, I’m doing that, but I’m putting products full of chemicals on your face.'”
Peters created a digital online retail store. It was a clean beauty store selling a selection of products. That went through several iterations until she decided it was time to shut down the retail platform and focus on her own brand.
“Because I’d been reading for years about what shouldn’t be in cosmetics, I knew exactly what I wanted and didn’t want in my formulations,” Peters says. “Plus, I wanted everything to perform as well as I’d want for film and TV, but also how I wanted it to feel on my skin.”
Starting in Her Kitchen Laboratory
Peters envisioned Aleph Beauty as a way to empower women to feel confident without the weight of traditional makeup. She saw too many clients who felt trapped between wanting to look polished and hating how makeup actually felt on their skin. The turning point came when she realized she couldn’t recommend existing products with integrity anymore.
“I’m super picky about texture,” Peters admits. “A lot of makeup artists are used to heavy products. Editorial makeup was never about ‘less is more.’ It was long-wear, heavy coverage. But I needed products that functioned well and felt good, because working with personal clients taught me that people want to look like the best version of themselves, not like someone else.”
She began formulating everything herself, along with various chemists. Then she passed the formulas to manufacturers. This approach differed from the usual process of writing a brief, handing it over to a manufacturer, and hoping for the best.
In New Zealand, she couldn’t initially find a manufacturer of colored cosmetics. She found a chemist with color experience and brought her to her kitchen. They literally worked there, formulating batch after batch until they got it right. Then there was the problem of actually manufacturing it. New Zealand had no manufacturers of colored cosmetics.
Things happened most unexpectedly. Peters found a manufacturer who worked on other products, like toothpaste. He had old batch equipment left over from a previous makeup brand. It was the perfect equipment to manufacture her products. They made everything from scratch together. It wasn’t sustainable long-term. Thankfully, manufacturers who had initially refused to make color cosmetics changed their minds after seeing the brand grow. But that scrappy beginning meant she could put all her own wants and needs into the products rather than being subject to someone else’s way of doing things.
Peters has always maintained that makeup should enhance, not mask. She tested every formula on her own skin first. If she felt even the slightest heaviness or tackiness, she went back to reformulate.
“One iteration made me feel like a cold breeze was going past my face,” Peters recalls. “I was like, ‘Get it off. We need to change that.'”
That level of sensory attention is rare in an industry focused on coverage and longevity above all else. But that hands-on formulation process is why the products perform the way they do. Makeup artist Brett Friedman has used Aleph Beauty on camera with Cameron Diaz, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jodi Foster, and Lisa Kudrow. When products work for high-definition film and photography, they work for everyone’s everyday life.
Building for Concentrated Performance
Peters designed everything in Aleph Beauty to be multifunctional. The concealer foundation is a concentrate. It’s not water, silicones, or microplastic films found in usual foundations. It’s pure, concentrated coverage with plant-based extracts and actives.
“You use very little,” Peters demonstrates. “What you see here is enough for your whole face. For concealer coverage, especially under the eyes, I use fingertips. With our diffuser brush, you pick up only what you need and diffuse it in place without rubbing. You’re blending and diffusing rather than trying to rub product in.” The product is so concentrated that a little goes a long way, and it changes the cost-per-use equation. People think clean beauty is expensive, but when one product lasts months instead of weeks, the math shifts.
Peters built Aleph Beauty for the woman who’s tired of ten-step routines and drawers full of products she never uses. She wanted to permit women to simplify without sacrificing quality or artistry. Every product in the line can work multiple ways. Peters believes makeup should adapt to your life, not the other way around.
The brand also offers a serum primer that’s highly nourishing with plant stem cells and milk thistle to protect the skin barrier. Users can mix it with the concealer foundation to create a liquid foundation. They can also use it for touch-ups later in the day. “Somehow it looks even better than at the start,” Peters notes.
Building the Innovation in Powder & Ingredients
The most unexpected innovation is Aleph Beauty’s powder. It functions not just as a finishing powder but also as a primer. “You’ve probably never heard of a powder primer before, and that’s because most powders are just for setting,” Peters explains. “You can use ours as an eye primer, lip primer, all over your face, then layer foundation over top for longer wear and more coverage. For oily skin or super long-wear matte coverage, you pat this on first, then add your foundation.” It’s a multifunctional translucent powder powered by active ingredients to improve the skin over time.
Aleph Beauty uses some of the best antioxidants available. Instead of just standard vitamin E, the formulas include CoQ10 for skin metabolism and mitochondrial function. They also include Totarol, a New Zealand ingredient that deserves its own spotlight.
“Totarol is a molecule that comes from the Totara tree, and these trees grow to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old,” Peters explains. “The reason they live so long is this molecule that sits in their bark and protects them from bacteria, fungi, and microbes. It’s seven times more antioxidant than vitamin E.”
Aleph Beauty sources Totarol entirely from reclaimed wood. The manufacturers have created a sustainable system in which they’re on call for any farmers in New Zealand who lose a branch from their tree. They’ll come pick it up and process it. Nothing goes to waste.
Beyond preservation, Totarol is anti-acne, antimicrobial, antibacterial, and antifungal. Peters uses it in almost every single product. It keeps the products stable for longer than typical natural color cosmetics. It’s also actually treating the skin while you wear them.
“What really excites me in formulating is improving mitochondrial function in the skin,” Peters reveals. “From a regulatory standpoint, we can’t talk about cellular function too readily. You’re not allowed to make those claims. But every ingredient I choose supports that function. Anecdotally, people find that, over time, their skin improves with these products. I’d rather have them discover that on their own and be surprised than promise it upfront and have them waiting for results.”
Peters’s approach to ingredient selection reflects her years of studying wellness modalities. She sees makeup not as decoration but as something you wear on your skin for hours every day. If it’s going to be there, it should be working for your skin, not against it.
Building Color That Adapts
Peters formulated the cheek-lip tints to be highly pigmented. Users can go from fully pigmented to completely sheared out. These rank among her most popular products. Aleph Beauty offers nine shades. Rather than constantly releasing new seasonal colors just because it’s trendy, Peters encourages customers to mix them to create what they want.
“My daughter actually discovered some of the best color combinations herself,” Peters shares with a laugh. “She’ll learn things on TikTok and come back and say, ‘Oh, did you know you can use your product this way?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I’ve been telling you that for five years, but I’m glad you discovered it.'” It’s better when people figure it out themselves, Peters believes. When customers discover their own perfect combinations, they invest in the products in a way you can’t manufacture.
The mixing treatment balm isn’t sticky or shiny. It’s just nourishing. It contains pomegranate extract and peptides to redensify the lip line over time. “It should be called plumping, but I didn’t want to call it that because it doesn’t tingle and that sensation freaks people out,” Peters explains. “But over time, it does work. I’ve had my own unintentional clinical trial. I went to a nutritionist who takes photos of your skin hydration in this special box, and when I compared my lip line from before I launched this to a year after, my lip line was intact and precise, whereas before it had been a bit all over the place.”
Her husband keeps one in his pocket all the time. Peters has one in her handbag, in her car, by her bed. The kids have them in their school bags. She wears it on planes because it helps protect the area around the eyes, too.
The radiance balms work as highlighters on their own or mixed with foundation for an all-over glow. They work across the broadest range of skin tones, including very fair, cool-toned skin to deep, dark skin, where they bring out golden tones. “I’ve tried so many champagne highlighters from big brands to indie brands, and most read white and chalky,” Peters notes. “But Radiance Moon actually works because of the undertone balance.”
She also uses Radiance Balm in the shade ‘Sun’ for clients with pigmentation. Her tip is to mix its golden warm tone, which helps color-correct pigmentation. You’re disguising it without adding layers of coverage. For blue tones under the eyes or bruising from treatments, the tiniest bit of cheek-lip tint mixed with concealer foundation acts as a color corrector.
Growing With Intention
Aleph Beauty operates primarily direct-to-consumer, with a soft launch in the US a couple of years ago. Peters and her husband built the brand together. He handles marketing and tech at a high level while Peters focuses on product development and creative vision. It’s a true partnership. They’ve been able to grow without compromising on their values or rushing to scale before they’re ready.
“We’re growing slowly and steadily with organic momentum rather than trying to be ‘the next big thing,'” Peters says. “I said from the beginning that we’re not launching this brand to explode overnight. We want slow, steady, organic growth because that way people really find us, love us, and stick with us.”
That’s how they’ve grown in New Zealand, which has been an interesting test market. It has the same population as Orange County, California. But it serves as an amazing beta-test market with very similar market alignments to the US. Many big companies actually test how things succeed in New Zealand before rolling them out to the US.
Peters chooses to work with independent businesses. These include wellness studios, skin spas, and sustainable boutiques. She selects each retailer because they’re excited about the brand, not just because they fit a category. Aleph Beauty currently partners with about five stores in the US across different retail types. One’s a lifestyle store in Washington. One’s a clean beauty store in Wilmington. The common thread is that the partners are as excited about the brand as Peters is.
“We really value partnerships where we can connect on a personal level,” Peters emphasizes. “If we can get the people selling our products to be as excited and knowledgeable as we are, that’s how we grow. It’s not just another pretty lipstick with pretty packaging. There’s a story behind it, values behind it, and a way to use it that’s quite different from typical makeup.”
When asked about entering Sephora, her recent trip to New York has reinforced that Sephora is not a sustainable retail model for Aleph Beauty. “Sephora is makeup overwhelm, and what we’ve done with Aleph Beauty is specifically designed to remove the makeup overwhelm,” Peters concludes. “We’re about reducing choice paralysis and helping people feel confident with less.” You can experience Aleph Beauty by purchasing directly from their website.
