Henkel AG & Co. KGaA

Henkel traces its origins to 1876, when Friedrich Karl Henkel and two partners founded Henkel & Cie in Aachen [1]. The company later moved its base to Düsseldorf, where it remains headquartered [2]. Over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries it grew from a detergents maker into a diversified group spanning consumer goods and industrial adhesives, with its beauty operations concentrated in hair care rather than colour cosmetics or fragrance.

The group's presence in hair is closely tied to the Schwarzkopf name, a business that predates its ownership by Henkel by almost a century. According to the harvested record, the Schwarzkopf business was built around Hans Schwarzkopf, born in Danzig in 1874 and died in Berlin in 1921, and it launched a powder shampoo in 1903 — long before the brand became part of the group in the 1990s. On its corporate site, Henkel frames its own history around what it calls a "strong legacy of 150 years" [3], a self-description that spans its full chemical and consumer-goods activity rather than beauty alone.

Henkel's beauty interests sit within its Consumer Brands unit, which the company describes as covering laundry, home care and hair [3]. The hair portfolio is anchored by the Schwarzkopf brands: the retail line Schwarzkopf, the salon-focused Schwarzkopf Professional, and associated ranges including Syoss, got2b, Palette and Indola. These cover mass-market retail shampoos and styling products as well as professional colour and care sold through salons.

Beyond the Schwarzkopf group, Henkel owns a set of professional and specialty hair labels, several of them added through acquisitions in North America. These include Joico, Alterna, Sexy Hair, DevaCurl, Kenra and Pravana, together with the newer creator-linked ranges Authentic Beauty Concept, STMNT and #mydentity by Guy Tang. In the United States, the group also owns the personal-care and soap brand Dial. The breadth of these labels reflects a portfolio assembled largely by acquisition rather than grown from a single house name.

Acquisitions have been central to Henkel's growth in hair and personal care. In 1995 the company acquired the cosmetics firm Hans Schwarzkopf GmbH, bringing the Schwarzkopf hair-care brand into the group [1]. In 2004 it purchased The Dial Corporation, described as Henkel's biggest acquisition in its history at the time [1].

The company continued to expand in the following decade. In 2016 it acquired Sun Products for 3.6 billion euros [1]. In 2017 it bought Shiseido's North American hair professional business, adding brands such as Joico and Zotos, and in 2019 it acquired the curl-focused hair-care company DevaCurl. These deals broadened Henkel's reach in the professional and specialty hair segments, particularly in the United States. More recently, in 2023, the group divested its business operations in Russia [1].

Henkel is a publicly traded company structured as a partnership limited by shares (KGaA) [2]. Its shares trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the tickers HEN for common stock and HEN3 for preference shares, and the preference shares are a component of the DAX index [1]. The group is headquartered at Henkelstraße 67 in Düsseldorf [2].