Gamila Secret

Gamila Secret is an Israeli natural-skincare brand built around handmade cleansing bars and plant oils made in the Galilee region of northern Israel. It takes its name from its founder, Gamila Hiar, who developed a herbal soap formula she calls "The Secret of Gamila" — a mixture of fifteen wild healing herbs blended with cold-pressed olive oil and other plant oils. The brand site dates the formal establishment of the brand to 2004 [1], though a company profile records its origins in the late 1990s [7], likely the period when Hiar began making the soap herself before the brand was formally set up.

The company remains active, with a live online shop, a current product range, and distribution through several international retailers.

Gamila Hiar was born in 1940 in Peki'in, a village in the Galilee, and according to the company she built her knowledge of healing herbs and plant oils through decades of agricultural work and traditional village medicine [1]. That research eventually produced the formula at the centre of the brand: fifteen healing herbs combined with pure plant oils, among them cold-pressed olive oil. The recipe is the brand's defining asset, and its details are otherwise kept private — hence the "secret" in the name.

The brand presents Hiar's own story as central to its identity, framing its mission as the plain idea that "everyone deserves healthy and soft skin" and associating itself with values of feminine emancipation and social inclusion.

The signature product is the Original Cleansing Bar, a soap the company describes as fully natural and suitable for all skin types. Its making is unusually slow: the herbal emulsion is cooked with the oils at a precise 80 degrees, spread on tables to set, then hand-cut, stamped and left to cure on racks for up to six months, with the exact timing depending on weather and humidity [4]. Women artisans shape and inspect each bar by hand before it is approved.

Beyond the original soap, the range has grown into a series of scented cleansing bars — among them Lavender Heaven, Reviving Rosemary, Soothing Geranium and Spearmint Sparkle — alongside face oils such as the Original Lavender Face Oil, a hand cream and a foot balm. Recurring ingredients across the line include shea butter, laurel oil, grape seed oil, sweet almond oil, lavender oil and coconut oil.

Gamila Secret positions itself within natural and slow-beauty skincare. The company says its products are handmade from organically grown ingredients and presents a vegan claim on its site, and it emphasises traditional, small-batch methods over mainstream soap manufacturing. Packaging is done by hand in Cyprus using what the brand describes as recyclable, eco-friendly paper [4].

The brand reports a number of awards across several markets, including a first-place finish for the cleansing bar in the basic-cleanser category at the 2010 Cosme Awards, an ELLE Beauty Award in Japan in 2013, a Best Hand Cream award in the Netherlands in 2014, and a VPC Green Beauty Award in Spain in 2021. In 2017 Hiar received a Jasmine Lifetime Achievement Award recognising women's empowerment [1]. These awards are stated by the company and are not independently re-verified here. Independent coverage of the brand has been limited; in the early 2010s several beauty bloggers reviewed the cleansing bar favourably [6].

The brand is active. It operates a live shop with a current catalogue that includes recent additions such as Miracle Mentha, and its products are carried by multiple international retailers. A 2025 company profile lists it as an operating business [7].