In 2017, Sharon Chuter came over and introduced herself to me at a Vogue Beauty breakfast. Within minutes, I sensed that she, a beauty exec with years of experience in the industry, wasn’t like anyone else in the room; laser-focused, charming, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye, her beloved dog Leo either cradled in her arms or peeking out of her Hermès bag. She spoke quickly—she could talk a mile a minute—but every word had weight. It was as though she were delivering a (great) Ted Talk in real time: compelling, clear, impossible not to listen to. She told me she was launching a beauty brand—something I hear often in my line of work. But this felt different. This was Uoma Beauty, a brand with a radical, left-of-center, technologically advanced approach to inclusivity. Yet Sharon’s ambition wasn’t simply to own a beauty brand. She was an activist. A woman on a mission to ensure that Black people were afforded the same care and attention in beauty as everyone else—and that equity existed across the board. She would not stop until she had changed the beauty industry forever.
Soon after, I began working closely with her as Uoma took shape. From late-night calls about names and campaigns, to strategy sessions on positioning and storytelling, to connecting her with Selfridges and other retailers, I had the privilege of witnessing her vision come alive. Sharon was unrelenting. Nothing was ever superficial or performative. She interrogated every detail—every name, every texture, every shade—with one relentless question: “Does this push us forward?”
And my goodness, she pushed. When Uoma Beauty launched in 2019, it wasn’t simply another debut on the crowded shelves of an oversaturated market. Uoma was disruptive. Political. Joyous. Unapologetically Black.
While many brands trumpeted “diversity” in glossy campaigns but quietly released shade ranges that began and ended with beige (or gray), Sharon delivered 51 foundations across six formulas cleverly calibrated to the Fitzpatrick scale, a numerical classification identifying six skin types for understanding skin more deeply and diversely. This in itself was groundbreaking. No one else was formulating foundations with this level of precision or innovation or ambition. She tested them everywhere, and on everyone: at Soho House over drinks, in boardrooms during meetings; she was always seeking perfection. For Sharon, foundation wasn’t just about pigment. It was about accuracy, recognition, belonging...
Her genius for naming was another marker of her brilliance. Sharon had a rare ability to distill culture and politics into a single word or phrase. Her concealers were called Stay Woke—a rallying cry that also alluded to the efficacy of the product. Her lipsticks bore the names of icons: Maya (Angelou), Eartha (Kitt), Sade, Miriam (Makeba), Diana (Ross): Black women who had shaped culture, inspired generations, and been lionized within the community. In placing their names on lipsticks, Sharon wasn’t just honoring them, she was weaving their legacy into the everyday rituals of beauty, slipping their power into makeup bags.
Even her campaigns were radical in intent. The inaugural one was shot in Nigeria at Fela Kuti’s Shrine—a place alive with political history and musical rebellion. To shoot there was to plant her flag in the ground. Fela was the father of Afrobeat, but also an outspoken critic of dictatorship and oppression. By situating beauty imagery in that space, Sharon made it clear: Uoma was not here to conform; it was here to challenge. To translate that vision, she chose Nadine Ijewere, one of the most in-demand fashion photographers of her generation, a fellow Nigerian. With Sharon, “good enough” was never an option. Only the best would do—anything less was an insult to the mission. She always said Uoma was not just a beauty brand; it was a manifesto.
Then came 2020. After the murder of George Floyd, brands around the world scrambled to post black squares on Instagram—gestures that were, at best, hollow, and at worst, exploitative. Sharon, however, had long seen through the industry’s platitudes. Years before “inclusivity” became the buzzword of the day, she had been calling out inequities in beauty. She had spoken, often at great personal and professional cost, about the lack of Black representation in boardrooms, on creative teams, in R&D labs... So when she launched Pull Up For Change, it wasn’t a bandwagon moment. It was the continuation of work she had already been doing.
Pull Up For Change was devastatingly simple, yet seismic in its impact: Sharon demanded that beauty brands disclose—within 72 hours no less—the number of Black employees in their corporate and leadership ranks. The hashtag #PullUpOrShutUp exploded. Giants like Estée Lauder, Glossier, MAC, and elf were forced into transparency. For decades, many beauty companies had happily capitalized on Black consumers while keeping Black people out of power. Sharon forced them to reveal the truth. And once those numbers were made public, there was no unseeing them. She shifted the conversation from tokenism to structural accountability. This was Sharon at her most uncompromising, unafraid and unwilling to let an industry hide behind silence.
She didn’t stop there. In 2021, she launched Make It Black—an initiative that reimagined beloved products from various beauty brands in bold black packaging, with proceeds channelled into the Pull Up For Change Impact Fund. This fund gave Black entrepreneurs not just visibility, but necessary capital. Because for Sharon, representation without redistribution of resources was meaningless.
But if all of this makes her sound like she was serious 24/7, let me be clear: Sharon also knew how to revel. She loved a party. The London launch of Uoma at Isabel’s in Mayfair remains etched in my memory—an evening of glam and abandon, with hours of dancing to the likes of Davido and Wizkid, her in her white Alexander McQueen suit. At the equally amazing Los Angeles launch party, Burna Boy performed.
It was a night to remember. These weren’t launches in the traditional sense. They were declarations. Uoma was groundbreaking but it was also joyous. It was about the music of life, laughter, celebration—which was part of Sharon’s character. She was also tireless, driven, and sometimes so consumed by her work that I often had to remind her to sleep, to eat. She was complicated, demanding, exacting. And she felt she had to be because for too long, beauty had thrived on mediocrity or erasure when it came to Black consumers. So she refused to allow Uoma—or herself—to play small. And she didn’t lower her standards. Excellence was the only option.
With me, she was warm, open, and vulnerable. Our relationship was built on respect and trust, and on friendship too. I truly believed in her and in Uoma. And so it was heartbreaking that the brand, despite its incredible start, did not scale to the global heights it deserved. The obstacles—funding gaps, systemic barriers, a lack of structural support and more—were beyond even Sharon’s formidable determination and vision. She was no longer at the helm of the brand at the time of her death, yet what she accomplished, as an independent brand founder, remains extraordinary. She forced a centuries-old industry, built on exclusion, to confront its biases. She centered Blackness—not as an afterthought, not as a marketing tool, but as the main event. She insisted that beauty is political, cultural, and, above all, beauty is for everyone.
When I listen back to the interview I recorded with her for my podcast On Reflection Beauty, I hear her voice—funny, sharp, generous with laughter, but unyielding in her truth. She sounds so alive. It’s strange to think she is gone—at just 38-years-old. We truly have lost an unsung powerhouse, a fearless woman who dared to demand more. It makes me so deeply, profoundly grateful to have known Sharon Chuter, to have worked with her, to have witnessed her complex genius up close. I hope her spirit endures; that it lives on in every brand so they are forced to think more deeply and authentically about inclusivity. And that it lives on in every Black entrepreneur emboldened to launch a brand that dares to center us.