Ceremonia

Ceremonia is a United States haircare brand founded in 2020 by Babba Rivera, built around clean formulas and Latin cultural heritage. It started online as a direct-to-consumer label with a single product and later expanded into Sephora, where the company describes itself as the first Latina-founded hair brand carried nationwide [9]. The brand remains active, with an ongoing product range, regular editorial coverage, and international distribution.

Its name and identity draw on the everyday hair and self-care rituals Rivera associates with Latin households, which the company translates into a "hair wellness" approach that pairs naturally derived ingredients with clinically tested results.

Ceremonia was created by Babba Rivera, whose background shapes much of the brand's story. According to Latina.com, Rivera has Chilean-Swedish roots: her parents emigrated from Chile to Sweden during the Pinochet dictatorship, and she grew up in a small apartment in public housing. Her father worked as a hairdresser and her mother kept up extensive self-care rituals, both of which she cites as early influences [10].

The company traces the brand's beginnings to years of heat and dye damage that left Rivera's own hair breaking and slow to grow. She founded Ceremonia in 2020 to repair that damage while building something rooted in Latin culture. Rivera also pointed to a market gap as a motivation: she has said that Latin consumers spend 46% more on haircare than any other demographic yet had little representation in the category [10]. The first product was Aceite de Moska, a lightweight pre-shampoo scalp oil based on a traditional Latin remedy.

Sources broadly agree on the 2020 founding date. The brand's own about page records the founding year as 2020 [2], while Beauty Independent specifies that Ceremonia debuted in October 2020 [9].

The brand launched in 2020 as a direct-to-consumer business built around its single inaugural oil, then widened its lineup over the following years. A turning point came in 2022, when Sephora selected Ceremonia as "the next big thing in hair" and brought it into stores, beginning with 83 Sephora locations on 9 September 2022 [2]. Latina.com reports that the brand later operated across more than 500 Sephora locations [10].

Growth accompanied the retail expansion. Beauty Independent reported that sales rose 230% between June 2021 and June 2022 [9], and the brand raised successive rounds of venture funding, including a $10 million Series A round to support the Sephora rollout [10]. By 2025 the company marked its five-year anniversary, citing more than 100 beauty awards and a presence in over 1,000 stores [2].

Ceremonia positions itself as a clean haircare brand rooted in Latin heritage, summed up in its tagline "Clean Haircare rooted in Latinx Heritage." In Rivera's words, the brand "was born out of the desire to restore my damaged hair, while celebrating the richness of Latin culture," combining the rituals she grew up with and a focus on sustainability. The company frames its goal as long-term hair health rather than temporary fixes, and states a mission to "empower a confident natural that feels as good as it looks."

Representation is central to how the brand presents itself. Rivera has said customers wanted clean and natural ingredients, brands that aligned with their values, and representation that reflected them. That positioning extends into cultural campaigns such as "El Pelo Malo No Existe" ("bad hair doesn't exist"), which pushes back on the idea that textured Latin hair is a problem to be fixed.

The range centers on naturally derived ingredients the brand sources largely from Latin America, organised into wash care, treatments, styling, fragrance, and accessories. Featured hero ingredients include guava, papaya, babassu oil, açai oil, aloe vera, arrowroot, and prickly pear, alongside the signature Aceite de Moska scalp oil. The company says its formulas contain roughly 95% or more naturally derived ingredients.

Several products recur across the brand's own materials and outside reviews: the Aceite de Moska pre-shampoo scalp oil, the Guava Hydrating Leave-In Conditioner, the Papaya Scalp Scrub, the Pequi Curl Activator, and the Guava Beach Waves texturizing spray. Beauty Independent described the guava leave-in conditioner as a bestseller [9], and in a Refinery29 review of the Sephora collection a writer called the Aceite de Moska oil "a literal gamechanger" [8].

On formulation, Ceremonia says it excludes more than 1,600 ingredients, following European Union frameworks, and names silicones, parabens, sulfates, phthalates, and artificial colorants among the exclusions. The brand says it relies on methods such as PET, RIPT, stability, and clinical testing in place of animal testing, and holds Leaping Bunny cruelty-free certification.

Ceremonia has drawn coverage across beauty and general media. Allure has referred to it as one of the most popular independent haircare brands, Vogue has profiled it as a clean haircare brand celebrating the Latinx community, and InStyle has cited it among clean haircare brands for shiny hair. In 2022 Refinery29 reviewed the full Sephora collection and called Ceremonia "our favorite Latinx-owned hair care brand" [8]. Founder Babba Rivera was interviewed about the brand on NBC's TODAY show in a "She Made It" segment, framed around Ceremonia being Sephora's first Latina-owned haircare brand [7].

Sustainability features prominently in how Ceremonia describes itself. The company calls itself a plastic-negative brand, saying it removes twice as much plastic waste from the environment as it sells in products, through a partnership with rePurpose Global. It says it uses 100% post-consumer recycled bottles, choosing recycled plastic over glass to reduce its carbon footprint, and offers carbon-neutral shipping. The brand also says it donates 1% of sales to environmental nonprofits.

Ceremonia is an active brand. It maintains a direct-to-consumer site and wide Sephora distribution, publishes an ongoing blog, and continued to release products and gather press through its 2025 five-year milestone.