Beauty empire in the making: Body Essentials

University of Maryland student and small business owner Mathea Abiara is one step closer to building her beauty empire with her recently perfected formula of body butters focused on boosting confidence under the name, Body Essentials.

Abiara, a freshman business management and finance double major, is focused on creating body butters with unrefined shea butter. The business owner claimed that most people buy refined shea butters thinking that it’ll moisturize their skin, not knowing that it could have fewer benefits than its unrefined counterpart. 

“I just make that unrefined smell work with my product, especially because I use naturally inspired fragrances, so it’s not too–it’s not too loud,” Abiara said about the smell. 

Unrefined shea butter tends to turn American consumers away from the product. According to a New Jersey biology study, refined shea butter is stripped of its antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties to deodorize the natural scent. 

Users like the bloggers of MadeOn: Skin Care Products, described the smell of unrefined shea butter as “burnt rubber” and to be “quite strong.” Other blogs like Baraka Blogs said that unrefined shea butter should only smell bad when there’s too much moisture but should have a  “faint smoky” smell. 

Since her start in June 2021, Abiara has made it her main concern to experiment with the scents of unrefined shea butters. It took her four years to perfect matching fragrances to work with the smell of unrefined shea butter. 

“When it came to formulating, I was definitely experimenting… to see what works, doing research on what ingredients are best with shea butter,” Abiara said, mentioning that she first learned her formula from a YouTube video. 

Her business, Body Essentials by Abiara: Handmade Luxury, features rose, mango, unscented and vanilla body butters. Abiara usually spends 12 hours a day in her Glen Burnie home making 55-70 body butters, but the amount changes with the demand. The business major makes even more products when she goes home now that she’s living on campus. 

Abiara described her vision for Body Essentials: to become a beauty provider that addressed different skin concerns and types including eczema and dry skin. 

The business owner believes that skincare is one of the steps to feel confident and good about oneself. 

“I love the resources that [the business school] provides, because once I graduate, I just want to go full throttle with my business,” she said. “I want to build a beauty empire—honestly, an empire about uplifting others and making products that actually work.” 

With resources like the Dingman-Lamone Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, a program aimed to help UMD students launch business ideas, Abiara felt like her business could flourish. 

“I kind of just blew up by word of mouth,” Abiara said. “They [Black students at UMD] want to see you succeed. They want to support you…Just having Black students here, I think it makes the communities closer,” she said. 

Destiny Fleming, a sophomore marketing major, loves the mango mania body butter after receiving a free mini tub last semester. She recently purchased a full tub because of how much she enjoyed the smell. 

“The smell is almost edible,” Fleming said. “I use them as a final layer to my pulse points… I’ve received so many compliments about the way I smell. The scents are so satisfying and the product is very light.” 

Fleming is in charge of outreach for the Black Business Association on campus. The group hosted a “Side Hustle” panel of student entrepreneurs Wednesday, where business owners like Abiara were able to discuss their business stories and developments. 

GaMiera Burke, freshman pre-accounting major at Florida A&M University and recurring customer, enjoys Abiara’s body butters. 

“I love their products. The mango mania scrub is my favorite, it has a good lather and great smell. I also really like the sweet vanilla body butter, [it] smells delicious and keeps you shiny and moisturized,” Burke said.

CORRECTION: A previous photo caption misspelled Mathea Abiara‘s name. This story has been updated.