What began as a personal passion project in Lisa Price’s Brooklyn kitchen has blossomed into one of the most beloved beauty brands in the industry. Inspired by her love of fragrance and a desire to care for her own skin, Lisa started blending oils and creating moisturizers for herself in the late 1980s. Encouraged by her mother, she sold her first products at a church flea market in 1993, marking the official start of Carol’s Daughter. From body care to hair care, the brand has stayed true to its roots—combining traditional recipes with modern science—to provide high-quality products that resonate deeply with its community. Over three decades later, Carol’s Daughter continues to innovate while remaining connected to its purpose: empowering customers to feel confident and beautiful.
OTC: Can you share the inspiration behind starting Carol’s Daughter and how it has evolved over the years? As the brand founder, what was your vision for the products when you first started, and how has that vision remained consistent today?
Lisa: The original inspiration for the brand came out of my love for fragrance. I have been enamored with fragrances, since as young as the age of five. In the late 1980s, I began blending fragrances and oils to create scents just for myself and then by the early 90s, I had kept it going and started making moisturizer in my kitchen because I always had very dry skin. I didn’t make them with the intent of selling them. I made them with the intent of taking care of my own skin. I started sharing them with friends and family and then in May 1993 my mother encouraged me to sell at a church flea market, and that was the beginning of the Carol’s Daughter brand, that Saturday in May in 1993 at that church flea market. The brand grew through customers asking for new and different things and me experimenting in my
Kitchen. Today, even though we aren’t operating out of my kitchen anymore and the company isn’t inside of my living room and I’m not speaking face-to-face with customers in stores, I’m always connecting with our consumers. For over a decade now I’ve been in constant communication with our community on social media and developing what they are looking for, as we shift our style and preferences, and even bring new innovations that they haven’t even thought of yet.
OTC: What sets Carol’s Daughter apart from other beauty brands in terms of product formulation and values?
Lisa: Longevity. This May will be 32 years of the brand and for just as long my team and I have been bringing a genuine passion and love to the product development and direction of the brand. I may have started it on my own, but in order for anything to be built and nurtured and for it to grow and flourish, it takes a team. It’s not the isolated work of one person. The people on my team come to their work with passion, with love, with an understanding of our core consumer and a desire to just make their life easier. In our process, we are very intentional about the ingredients we focus on and include and also on those we leave out. We focus on science, on safety and on performance.
OTC: Can you talk about the importance of incorporating natural ingredients in the product line and how it resonates with your customers?
Lisa: For Black and brown people, our first hair salon for a lot of us was the kitchen of our mother, our grandmother and aunt, a family friend. A lot of the recipes that we have to take care of our hair and skin, were born out of what other family members had figured out for themselves because for a very long time, people did not develop products with us in mind with our hair and our skin in mind, so you learned something from your grandmother when she would mix things together, and sometimes those things were traditional beauty products that existed, but maybe she enhanced it with extra-virgin olive oil or maybe someone whose family is of African descent, Shea butter was a part of their lives early on.
At Carol’s Daughter, we bring the recipes and ingredients we grew up with and bring them where the science is and because our focus is on performance and safety, you will find recipes centered on familiar traditional remedies, sometimes paired with ingredients that are not ‘natural ingredients’ — we take a best of both world’s approach.
OTC: With Carol’s Daughter being a trusted brand in many beauty supply stores, what strategies do you believe have helped keep your products relevant and in-demand?
Lisa: People look for products that work and they love to use, it’s that simple. Our consumers trust that we will deliver incredible formulas, with ingredients they’re looking for, and in scents they love and by sticking to this we’ve been able to keep our products relevant and in-demand.
OTC: What are some of your most popular products?
Lisa: Our Black Vanilla collection is known to replenish moisture and adds shine and has been a fan favorite for over 20 years. A newer favorite, the Goddess Strength collection was created to strengthen weak, dry hair while preventing breakage and split ends and has become one of our most beloved collections.
OTC: How do you prioritize sustainability in your product development and business practices?
Lisa: We do many things to help with sustainability, from choosing post-consumer recycled plastic for our packaging, to developing formulas that rinse out more easily to reduce water usage, it’s something that we’re always thinking about and looking to improve on.
OTC: Can you share any exciting new launches or product innovations coming from Carol’s Daughter in the near future?
Lisa: In January, we launched Goddess Strength Minoxidil Hair Regrowth Treatment – a clinically proven treatment that targets hair loss by re-activating follicles and stimulating growth for thicker, fuller, hair in just four months. A new addition to the award-winning Goddess Strength collection, Goddess Strength Minoxidil Hair Regrowth Treatment strengthens your curls as they grow and is specifically designed to be compatible with natural hair care routines and is formulated to ensure no residue buildup and protection to your curl pattern.
This Spring, comes the debut of the Goddess Strength Curl Restoration Bonding Pre-Wash which is specifically designed to restore curls from the inside out. This innovative product serves as the first step before shampooing, reinforcing strength and protecting hair from future styling damage. Additionally, it works at a molecular level to rebuild and fortify weak bonds caused by manipulation, enhancing hair’s resilience. Formulated with castor oil, biotin, and citric acid, this high-quality pre-wash treatment supports overall hair health, promoting smoother, stronger curls that effortlessly spring back.
OTC: Work-life balance is not always easy for many entrepreneurs. How do you manage balancing your work with your personal life, and what advice would you give to others trying to find that balance?
Lisa: Now, when I first heard work-life balance many years ago, probably 20 years ago, I interpreted that as everything gets done, so I didn’t really interpret it as balance. It was a nice way of saying you still have to check all of the boxes on your list. And so for a very long time, I was still trying to get everything done, in beast mode all the time, but when self-care lacks – that is not balance. What I later learned is that balance is accepting that everything on the list is not going to get done and prioritizing what is most important.
When I first started thinking about this a number of years ago, it was at a time when a new baby was in our family and my two oldest were 10 and 9. So for the first three years of her life, when I would speak, I would say here’s an analogy for you — with the older two, if somebody stumbles or falls, they may skin a knee, scrape an elbow, or have a little bit of a bruise and you can get some cream and a bandage and some soap and water and fix them up and they’ll be OK. But… if you drop the baby, the baby can really get hurt. I would make a lighthearted comment about it, but it’s important to remember that while you’re out there juggling all of these things, you have to make sure that you’re not juggling so much that you accidentally drop the baby because babies require immediate attention and they require you looking at them right away and figuring out what’s going on. This helped me triage my life and really prioritize what is important. As you drill down on those things, you also have to realize that your health is important, your rest is important— because if you don’t get that, you can’t be all of the things that you need to be to the people in your home, and all of the things that you need to be to the people who run your business and who you need to be for your business.
You have to be able to have vision, you have to be able to have discernment. You can’t have those things if you don’t take care of yourself and if your well-being is not in balance. So it’s not about work life balance and having it all. They sound nice, they sound like great sound bites, but they’re just traps. The balance is balancing your mind-body spirit and bringing the best you to the table.
OTC: What is the best piece of life advice anyone has ever given you, and how has it influenced your journey as an entrepreneur?
Lisa: I have to say that I am blessed beyond measure to have received incredible advice during the 32 years that I’ve been doing this — narrowing it down is tough. My husband and I were at an appearance on a live national TV show — I was so nervous. I had done television prior to this point, but I had not yet done live television, and I was so nervous that I was going to drop something or spill something or say the wrong thing and we wouldn’t be able to stop and go back and fix it. And my husband looked at me and he said “We can leave. Just know, that we can leave, we can tell them that we’re sorry, you can’t do this today.” We both worked in television and film production so we understood how things work and Richard Simmons happened to be a guest on the show that day. And you know he was the type of guest a lot of people don’t know who he is, but he was the type of guest that if you needed him to fill-in an extra five minutes that was an easy thing for him to do, and so my husband pointed out “You know they’ll adjust the schedule and it’ll be okay and, but I don’t think that’s really what you want to do. Everybody is at home–everybody’s going to be sitting in front of the TV waiting to see you and I know that’s important to you, but if you want to leave, I will take you home, but I don’t think you really wanna leave. I think you’re just nervous.” And he was right. And he said the perfect thing in that moment. I did the show. I did great, I was fine, but what my husband did was remind me about what was important to me, which was greater than the fear that I was feeling at the time. So whenever I was in those situations where I felt like I was going to panic, when I was having a hard time getting control of my breath, when I felt like I wanted to run–that moment taught me to remind myself about what is important. When someone gives you permission to walk away, it takes that pressure off. He didn’t stand there and say, you better buck up, you better get over this nervousness, and get out there and go kill it like I know you can. That could’ve been something to say, but he knew me well enough to know that it was not the time to push. It was the time to give me grace and give me space to walk away and that is something that I was lucky to have another person point out for me. But I realized that I needed to learn how to do that for myself so I kept that lesson with me and I learned how to tell myself, “What is important to you right now? Do you want to walk away from this or do you want to do this?” I have leaned on that many, many, many times.
OTC: What advice would you give to fellow entrepreneurs, especially those in the beauty industry, who are just starting out or looking to grow their brands?
Lisa: The advice that I always give to entrepreneurs is — ‘Know Your Purpose’ — know what it is that you bring to the table and why you are different. Make that a part of your story, make it a part of your social media, make it a part of your branding. That may require that you work with people who are skilled at that, to pull those things together, because we can get lost in the This is what this company does, this is what this brand does. This is what this influencer does. And use other people’s ideas to help us put ours together, not that we’re copying but we’re using other people as a blueprint.
That’s OK because some of us are doing this without a safety net, without education, without past experience, and we’re figuring it out as we go along. But if you don’t know your own story and your own purpose and why you do what you do, when you go to look at what someone else is doing and how they’re achieving it, you can’t figure out how to use their process as a guideline. Without infusing your own storytelling, you could fall into mimicking what someone else does and not really being your true self.
So it is important to know your why –very, very important to know your why — in 32 years my brand has changed in so many different ways. It started out in a kitchen. It started out with one person doing all of the work. It started out with only products for the body and it evolved into bath products and skin care and hair care and different employees and multiple store locations and then no more store locations only store partners. So many things have changed in 32 years but my why hasn’t.
My why is my customer, my why is bringing her something that helps her in her life so that when she looks in the mirror, she sees the beauty that is inside of her that is shining outside of her. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see something that needs to be fixed, she sees someone who needs assistance, guidance, and support. I help bring some of those tools into her life to give her the support that she needs, that has never wavered and never changed and if anything it gets stronger with each day.
