Meet The Founder
Una is the founder of HairGarten, a hair care company dedicated to reconnecting black and brown women with the roots of natural hair care. Through education, HairGarten mission is to detangle the mystery behind healthy hair treatment and provide products free of harmful chemicals to nourish the hair black and brown women have been born with.
Throughout her life, even before she could identify them, Una has been driven by three guiding principles; community, challenge, and freedom. These are the three main ingredients in everything created at HairGarten.
Before embarking on a journey of entrepreneurship, Una lived in Queens, NY and enlisted into the Army at the age of eighteen.
By twenty, her superiors recognized a drive in Una that drove her to exceed expectations which resulted in Una being put in leadership positions, managing soldiers ten years her senior. Upon her honorable discharge, Una entered nursing school. She started her last year pregnant, giving birth before graduation, but still finishing on time and passing her board certification shortly after.
Early in her career as a critical care travel-nurse, Una gave birth to her second child and continued working as a single mother.
By the time her daughter was two, Una had started making hair care products for her family, who encouraged her to sell them. With two young children and a drive to build something for them and her community, she started Au Rebelle, a successful natural hair care line.
OUR STORY
HairGarten was born of a need for rediscovery, finding the beauty we’ve been missing for too many centuries. Our mission is to help educate women about our hair, how to embrace its beauty, re-establish a cultural relationship, and recognize its relevance in a positive self-image. We want people to learn what natural ingredients offer which benefits and best management practices to remove the stigma of natural curls being a burden. Everything about us is a blessing and we seek to rediscover that as well as the knowledge of natural hair care we’ve sacrificed to the salty tides of time. Join us on this journey of self-discover, of identity.
Our name evolved from the need to express the beauty inherent in our natural appearance and the need for fundamental education about our hair care, lost over years of cultural erosion. And so formed HairGarten, which points both to the basic knowledge we receive as children, as many of us are on this hair journey, and the beauty we can cultivate as alive and vibrant as the healthiest flower garden.
