The world according to internet sensation, Huda

She has over 23.3 million Instagram followers, a cult makeup line and something to say. Huda Kattan tells us how it all happened.

growing up, there was no one around who was really hairy. And my sisters were so beautiful – my little sister, Mona, was a pageant girl! I was this weird-looking hairy child. I had more than a unibrow; I feel like I had a moustache, a goatee. I think that’s what first led me to beauty and this idea of wanting to find ways to feel better about myself. By the time I was nine years old, I was already super into it, especially DIYS inspired by my mom, Susu Al Qazzaz, who has always believed that remedies from the earth can be more powerful than beauty products. The first one I ever did, a yoghurt mask with honey, is still my go-to today.

I ended up moving to Dubai and going into finance after university because of family pressure. I was

“Before, I felt a bit nervous to be someone who never compromises, but now I’m in a place where I don’t want to compromise.”

trying to love it, but I just didn’t. When the recession hit Dubai in the late 2000s, I remember going to the mall to buy lipstick. No matter how broke I got – and I was very broke at the time – lipstick always lifted me up; it’s so powerful! That’s when I decided to move to Los Angeles to study makeup artistry.

After graduating, I started a blog (hudabeauty.com), and eventually my sister Mona, who is such a visionary, said I should create a product. I felt really insecure about this, but I’d been hacking together my own lashes by cutting, curling and gluing different ones together. And Mona was like, “Why don’t you take these lashes you keep crafting and manufacture them?”

I knew exactly what I wanted, down to packaging, which I created with a graphic designer, using a selfie I took of my own eyes. In the beginning, it was a real struggle, and I barely kept up. A lot of the time, when we needed extra product or packaging, I would do makeup artistry jobs so I could afford to buy supplies.

The thing that helped me most when I started my own business was my experience as the president and PR director of student associations in university. That taught me how to create and run an organisation, and how to really make things – even the difficult things – happen.

I’ve had some pinch-me moments since then. There was a line outside of The Dubai Mall when we launched our lip liner last year, and everything sold out in one day! It was so surreal and crazy, and of course I was crying. And then we launched the liners in the US, and they became bestsellers. Everyone was shocked because it was a lip liner – something no one believed in – but I knew in my gut that they were going to make a comeback; people didn’t realise the potential.

Those were moments when I was so grateful to be able to do what I do. Product development is emotional for me! It’s really important as a brand that we feel that our products are going to be life-changing for everyone who buys them. We won’t ever launch something we don’t feel strongly about.

People often ask who I look up to, and, truthfully, I love Steve Jobs because he never compromised. Before, I felt a little bit nervous to be someone who never compromises, but now I’m in a place where I don’t want to.

Sometimes I’m really annoying and hard to deal with, but I want to make sure that I feel really good about everything we do.