MILAN — Everything leads to shea butter for Menaye Donkor.
The bubbly entrepreneur and former Miss Universe, Ghana grew up in Accra seeing her mother using the ingredient as a go-to solution for everything. Hence her choice to make it the starting point of her beauty venture, She-y body care.
The brand just opened a pop-up at Milan’s Smalto beauty salon to test the waters of brick-and-mortar retail ahead of a broader product expansion for the first quarter of 2024.
Donkor’s goal is to add facial skin care to the offering, whose formulations are manufactured in Italian laboratories based on raw materials imported from Ghana.
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The She-y range includes body creams and scrubs containing up to 18 percent of shea butter ethically sourced from the country, in addition to hyaluronic acid, vitamin E and a blend of Senegalese algae extracts. There are also body oils, mixing shea oil with sunflower, argan, jojoba, almond and avocado oils.
Each product category is available in four scents with price tags ranging from 65 euros for the oil to 120 euros for the cream.
In sync with her philanthropic work, Donkor weaved a charity element in her beauty business. In addition to creating job opportunities for women in the shea butter production in Ghana, she pledged a percentage of profits from product sales to finance the Menaye School of Hope, which provides free education for children in the country.
The institution was set up by the Menaye Charity Organization nonprofit Donkor established in 2004 — the same year she won the pageant and moved to New York to pursue a modeling career. There she leveraged her exposure to new social contacts to sensitize people around the issues in her country, before eventually founding the organization to provide free quality education, health care and child development in deprived communities in Ghana with the hope of breaking the cycle of poverty.
