JANELL STEPHENS
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Black News 
CAMILLE ROSE
Janell Stephens considers her grandmother the patron saint of her now multi-million dollar company, Camille Rose Naturals. The CEO, who was born in Morgan City, Louisiana, (a small, predominantly Catholic town about 80 miles East of New Orleans) said she was raised right next door to her “second mom.” Stephens describes her matriarch as a calm and laid back nurturer who conjured up lotions and products from foraged herbs because “she couldn’t afford a lot.”
The plants and vegetables found in the fields and forests of the Bayou helped her grandmother, who was a mother of seven, nourish and cook for her entire family. Stephens credits her grandmother’s natural living to the health and longevity she enjoyed well into her 90s. “It really starts there,” Stephens said, “with what you’re putting inside your body.” That holistic spirit is a generational gift now blossoming through the Camille Rose core business ethos that encourages a beauty that emanates from inside. Stephens recalls sitting in the living room with her grandmother and admiring her smooth legs and glowing complexion. “I was like, ‘That is amazing. The only way you would know that my grandmother is 99 is because she started losing memory, but as far as her look and her complexion, you know, it was still there,” she said, “Barely any wrinkles.” Her grandmother’s roots and rituals carried with Stephens into her own kitchen alchemy when she started Camille Rose in 2011 in her own home. From the brand’s homegrown origins to the massive, full-scale, international operation it is today, Southern hospitality and care remain core pillars of the Camille Rose lifestyle brand.
When I caught up with the jet-setting mom of five over the phone in mid-April, Stephens was in Orlando – her third U.S. city stop in just one week. After back-to-back meetings with retailers in both Dallas and Ft. Lauderdale, Stephens landed at Ulta Beauty World 2026, a conference the brand has been a key part of since Camille Rose launched in Ulta Beauty stores in 2021.The sold-out, immersive event is a chance for brands to meet and interact with Ulta Beauty salespeople, managers, and customers, and the self-made, master-mixer told HelloBeautiful that she was hyped to let attendees know that she’s been “in the lab.” The brand’s new “Pink Coat” YouTube series, (inspired by the CEOs girlie-pop pastel pink lab coat), invites viewers inside the Camille Rose research facilities to learn the science behind the line’s health-conscious formulas. “You can come into the laboratory with me and our head chemist and see how the process works,” she said. An herbalist by trade, Stephens said ingredients like flaxseed and marshmallow root are some of her favorite herbs to work with because of the slip and moisturizing penetration they provide to each hair follicle. Her scientific formulas, which smell good enough to eat, are more like home-cooked recipes — inspired by the southern roots that raised her. She said in the early days of her business, a repairman came into her home one day and saw her making these big, huge pots of product and assumed she was baking a cake because “my whole house would just smell good,” she said.
As a CEO with a natural inclination towards nurturing others, Stephens said she carves out time in her hectic schedule to send that love and attention inward. “I give myself one hour a day to pour into my body and to make sure I’m physically fit, feeling good, and my energy is upbeat,” Stephens said. The hour spent moving her body, whether it’s through lifting heavy or sculpting through CTR Pilates classes, is an investment not only into herself, but also into the people she serves, like her team, her husband, or her kids, she said. Her self-care also includes juicing with natural ingredients like sea moss, and keeping her diet as clean and low sugar as possible, a practice that helped her children who once struggled with chronic eczema, she said. “I tried everything, everything on the shelf, but I do want to tell people who are struggling with it that it starts internally. You have to really make sure you’re label reading everything. You have to take out a lot of the junk. You have to stay away from sugars,” she said.
As Camille Rose deepens their haircare offerings (Stephens tells us she is now a certified trichologist) and branches into the skincare, soap treatment bars, and collagen hair powder categories this year, the line’s 360 lifestyle and wellness approach is being built out to help customers make healthy, daily choices that impact gut, hair, and skin health. “We are tackling hair growth internally,” she said, and helping women “bear your beautiful” through education and research that explores how food, chemicals, and hormonal changes impact how we show up externally. “I think that we should take care of our core without needing anything, you know?” Stephens said. “So just bearing your beautiful on the outside is very important to me.”A legacy of beauty that shines as her ancestor’s (grandma’s) wildest dreams, indeed.
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