black|Up

black|Up is a French makeup company founded in Paris in 1999 by Fabrice Mahabo, a makeup artist from the Ivory Coast [6]. It was built around medium-to-deep skin tones at a time when few mainstream lines offered foundations and complexion products in those shades, and it presents itself as the first French makeup brand dedicated to that audience [1]. The company remains active, with an online storefront and a current catalogue spanning complexion makeup, eyes, lips, fragrance and a professional haircare line.

The brand is also notable for an unresolved dispute over its origins: Mahabo, the founder, has publicly said he never sold the company, while editorial accounts describe his progressive removal from it during the 2000s.

⚑ Thinner sourcing. The article relies largely on the brand's own statements (T2–T3). Glowpedia is seeking independent sources.

Mahabo trained at the Christian Chauveau makeup academy in Paris, graduating in 1997 [7]. Two years later he founded the company, originally under the name "Godo Black-Up" — a tribute to his late father, Godo Zoleba Guillaume — before it was shortened to black|Up [7]. Working as a makeup artist, he set out to develop textures, formulas and pigments for a dedicated line for women of color, who he felt lacked products suited to their needs.

Editorial coverage has framed the brand as a French counterpart to earlier American lines such as Black Opal and Fashion Fair, created for much the same reason: to serve consumers underserved by the wider cosmetics market [6].

black|Up positions itself around darker complexions specifically, describing a "complexion-first" approach intended to deliver intense pigments and even coverage across medium-to-deep skin. According to the company, its formulas are "designed to reveal every nuance of dark skin, without ever masking" [1], and it frames its mission as the idea that "every skin deserves excellence." The brand summarises its tone with the words powerful, authentic, determined and invincible.

On its own pages the company states that its foundations are 100% vegan and its formulas cruelty-free, and that production is European with a selection of products made in France [1].

The range centres on complexion products built for darker skin tones. Items the brand highlights include its Two Way Cake compact powder foundation, a Cream Powder Foundation, a High Coverage Concealer, the Matte Definition Powder and the Mascara Revoluption. Alongside makeup, black|Up sells an Eau de Parfum collection — including Nairobi, Desert Rose and Namibia Dream — and a professional haircare line. The company says its products are sold through retail, department stores and online [6].

The control and ownership of black|Up are contested in the available sources. Several Black-business publications have documented how Mahabo was, by their accounts, gradually pushed out of the company he founded. They describe an investor brought in through his business partner in 2004 without his consent, dilution of his shareholding from 60% to 3.8% of the share capital, a wrongful termination in 2007, and his removal from the company's official history by February 2009 [5].

Accounts of current ownership and that founder dispute diverge. One editorial source records Jean-François Damour as "Owner-President" of black|Up and Lionel Durand as its chief executive [7]. Against this, Mahabo has maintained that he never sold the brand, stating in a 2010 social-media post that "I haven't sold black|Up, it is a ruse" [5]. No corporate parent company is identified in any of the available sources.

In 2014 the beauty publication COCOTIQUE profiled black|Up as "A Pioneer Company for Brown Beauty," describing it as founded in 1999 by Mahabo to serve women of color [6].

black|Up is active. It operates an online store across English and French locales, with current product lines that include a more recent fragrance collection, indicating continued commercial operation. Its makeup remains distributed beyond France into other European markets.