Glow Recipe

Glow Recipe is an American skincare company based in New York, founded in 2014 by Sarah Lee and Christine Chang [5]. The two are Korean-American former colleagues from L'Oréal who first built the business as an online shop curating Korean beauty brands, then turned it into their own line of fruit-powered products. The company is best known for its Watermelon Glow range and for an early, prominent presence on TikTok among younger skincare audiences.

The brand sits within the broader K-beauty movement and the "glass skin" aesthetic, and it remains active, selling directly through its own site and through retailers including Sephora and Cult Beauty.

Sarah Lee and Christine Chang met while working at L'Oréal, where both spent roughly a decade across offices in Seoul and New York on brands such as Kiehl's, Lancôme and L'Oréal Paris. Chang, a Columbia University graduate, was born in Korea and spent parts of her childhood in Louisiana and her teenage years in Australia [6]. Their shared background in Korean beauty marketing shaped the company they went on to build.

Glow Recipe launched in 2014 as an e-commerce platform selling a curated selection of Korean cosmetics to a Western audience [5]. In 2015 the founders appeared on the television show Shark Tank, where they were offered a $425,000 investment but turned it down [6]. The company describes its early identity as a retailer rather than a maker; the move into its own products came two years later.

In spring 2017 Glow Recipe pivoted from curation to creating its own line, beginning with a blueberry cleanser and a watermelon sleeping mask [5]. Both became early hits at Sephora, which the founders grew through what Fortune described as a "high-touch" retailer approach. The Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask, sold in a jar shaped like a melting ice cube, drew a waitlist of more than five thousand people at launch [6].

The brand later became, in Fortune's account, "one of the most popular brands on TikTok," finding an audience among Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers [5]. By 2023 the company reported reaching $300 million in revenue [5], with its Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Dew Drops and toners together accounting for 41% of the business and serums for a further 35%.

Glow Recipe positions itself around clean, fruit-based formulations rooted in Korean skincare practice. Its stated mission is to create "clean, clinically-effective, fruit-powered skincare for glowing skin," which the company says is "anchored in Korean skincare philosophies." The founders frame K-beauty less as a pursuit of perfect skin than as a daily self-care habit; Chang has described it as "a philosophy" centred on "having a self-care routine that you look forward to" [6].

The brand also takes a position on how skin is portrayed. According to its about page, it pledges to "never use the words poreless, perfect, ageless or flawless" and to show "real, unretouched skin." It frames its social commitments in similar terms, stating that "beauty shines brighter from a generous heart" and citing donations and mentorship work, alongside a stated aim to reduce its carbon footprint.

The company's products are built around antioxidant-rich fruit extracts paired with established skincare actives, drawing on ingredients such as watermelon, avocado, blackberry, cloudberry, guava, papaya, plum and prickly pear. Signature items include the Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Dew Drops, the Plum Plump Hyaluronic Serum and the Avocado Ceramide Recovery Serum. A more recent addition, the Prickly Pear Peptide Mucin, is described by the brand as a vegan "snail" mucin serum made with 81% cactus-derived mucin in place of an animal-derived ingredient.

Several products carry United States design patents, including the Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Dew Drops, the Avocado Ceramide Recovery Serum and the Plum Plump Hyaluronic Serum [4]. These are design patents covering product appearance rather than separately trademarked technology; the brand notes it markets "glass skin" and "fruit-powered" as concepts rather than registered technical complexes.

On formulation, Glow Recipe states that all of its products are vegan and that it is certified cruelty-free under the Leaping Bunny programme [3]. The company publishes a list of excluded ingredients, saying it formulates without parabens, formaldehyde, sodium lauryl sulfate, mineral oil, talc and synthetic colorants, among others, and that it limits synthetic fragrance to no more than 0.5% in its facial skincare.

Glow Recipe has been the subject of national press coverage. A 2024 Fortune profile traced how the two former L'Oréal employees built the company into a $300 million skincare brand [5], and Columbia Magazine published a founder profile of Chang and Lee the same year [6]. The Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask has been described by retailers and editorial outlets as a cult favourite [7]; the brand has since discontinued the original mask and replaced it with a reformulated night treatment.

Glow Recipe remains active. It operates a direct-to-consumer website carrying a 2026 copyright notice, current promotions and recent launches such as the Prickly Pear Peptide Mucin [1], and its products are distributed across multiple markets, including the Nordic region.