Herba Anima

Herba Anima, written HERBANIMA by the company itself, is an Austrian range of natural hair-care products, henna-based plant hair colours and scalp brushes made for professional hairdressers. It grew out of a natural hair salon that the brothers Ingo Vallé and Ullrich Untermaurer opened in Vienna in 1985, a salon the company describes as the first of its kind in Europe [8]. Since 2010 the business has been run by the siblings Iris and Ulf Untermaurer, who own it in equal shares through their Viennese company, Untermaurer und Partner GmbH [7].

The range is sold through hair salons rather than through wholesalers or shops, and much of the brand's public activity revolves around teaching hairdressers how to work with plant colour. Its best-known tool is Kaleidoskop, a salon app launched in 2021 that works out colour recipes to the gram. The German trade magazine TOP HAIR International, reporting on the app's launch, noted that the company had by then offered natural products for more than 35 years under the motto "back to nature and away from chemistry" [9].

According to the company's own account, the brand began with a health problem. Ingo Vallé, a hairdresser, could not tolerate conventional hair products. Rather than leave the trade, he and his brother Ullrich Untermaurer founded a salon that would work only with natural products. The company's history page frames the decision as swimming against the current, and states plainly that giving up was not an option.

An Austrian trade portal, imSalon, gives the salon's name as HAARMONIE Naturfrisör and confirms that it was founded in Vienna in 1985. It adds that the salon works exclusively with natural products and with HERBANIMA's own plant colours [10]. The claim that it was Europe's first natural hair salon, however, comes from the company and has not been independently confirmed. The 1985 date refers to the opening of the salon; no separate launch year for the HERBANIMA product line has been published.

The spelling of the founder's name differs slightly between the brand's two websites. The Austrian site, run by the brand owner, gives it as Ingo Vallé, while the site of the Swiss distributor renders it as "Ingo Valle`", with a backtick where the accent would be [2]. Both refer to the same person, and the two accounts of the founding are otherwise identical.

The name itself is explained on the brand's website as a combination of two words: herba, meaning herb, and anima, meaning life force.

After the salon opened, the founders continued to develop their idea of the "original" hairdresser and to create products they considered in harmony with nature. Over time the business settled on four pillars, which it still names today: brushing, natural hair care, acid–base balance and plant colours.

In 2010 the company passed to the next generation, the siblings Iris and Ulf Untermaurer. The Austrian site describes this as a handover (Übergabe), the Swiss site as a takeover (Übernahme), but both say the founding motto kept its full meaning under the new management.

The most visible recent milestone came in 2021. In an item dated 27 April 2021, TOP HAIR International reported that Iris and Ulf Untermaurer, as managing directors, were bringing out the Kaleidoskop app, which went online on 1 May of that year [9]. Alongside the app, the company runs seminars for hairdressers at its academy in Vienna and in individual salons, and it offers a free e-learning course.

Herba Anima is owned and operated by Untermaurer und Partner GmbH, a company registered in Vienna. Its legal notice states that Iris Untermaurer and Ulf Untermaurer each hold 50 percent of the shares [7]. The brand is therefore independent and family-owned; no acquisitions, outside investors or sister brands are known.

Distribution in Switzerland is handled by a separate company. The Swiss website operates as HERBANIMA Generalvertrieb Schweiz, and its legal notice names Naturfrisör & Produktvertrieb GmbH, based in Konolfingen, as the operator [3]. This firm acts as the brand's general distributor for Switzerland, not as its owner. The Swiss site also states that the products themselves are made in Austria.

The brand presents itself with the tagline "natural products by hairdressers for hairdressers", and describes its range under the name elixier der natur ("elixir of nature") as a holistic salon and home-care line that combines old knowledge, new findings and modern technology. The company says that the long-term health of hairdressers and their clients is the standard by which it measures product quality.

A statement on the brand's history page puts this in personal terms: the aim, it says, is to develop something for hairdressers and their clients with a clear conscience, and the priority is the quality of the products rather than profit.

HERBANIMA lists its own values as natural, uncomplicated, versatile, low-key, and elementary and simple to use. Its commercial model follows the same line. The company says that salons may use the whole system or only individual parts of it, and that there is no minimum order, no exclusivity and no obligation. According to the brand, the range is not available through hairdressing wholesalers or ordinary retail. Trade prices are shown only to logged-in hairdressers, while private customers are referred to a list of stockist salons.

The imSalon portal quotes Iris Untermaurer with a short remark that sums up the brand's stance toward the wider market: "It is astonishing what passes for natural."

Plant hair colours. The plant colours are the centre of the range and of the brand's training. Henna forms their base, to which the company adds a number of other purely plant-derived dyes. The colours are not sold as ready-made shades. Instead, 15 colour tones are mixed by the hairdresser to reach the result each client wants [4]. The company says the colours are pesticide-free, grown under controlled cultivation, and contain no p-phenylenediamine (PPD), a synthetic dye ingredient. It also says that a special colouring technique allows white hair to be covered up to 100 percent, though the technique is not described by name.

Brushes. Brushing is one of the brand's four pillars, and its range includes detox and care brushes (Entschlackungsbürsten) intended for scalp care alongside combs and accessories.

Care and washing. The rest of the range covers shampoos and washing gels, surfactant-free "alternative" hair washes, hair and scalp care, and finishing products for styling. An acid–base balance line, which includes food supplements, sits alongside the cosmetic products.

Formulation claims. HERBANIMA describes its hair-care products as natural products made from controlled raw materials, free of silicones and parabens, "vegan friendly", and labelled with a full ingredient declaration. The company states that all its products are made and filled in Austria and developed without any animal testing [1]. No third-party certifications, such as vegan or cruelty-free labels, are known; these statements are the company's own.

The Kaleidoskop app. Launched in 2021, Kaleidoskop is a salon app built around the plant colours. The hairdresser answers a few questions about a client's current and desired hair colour, and a calculator then works out the exact recipe to the gram. According to the brand, the calculations draw on more than 6,500 recipes [6]. Videos guide the user through each step, from the initial consultation to applying the colour. TOP HAIR noted that access is granted per salon, so every member of staff can use it, not only those who have attended a seminar, and that more colour powder can be ordered directly through the app.

Seminars. The brand's training programme includes a day-long course on the Kaleidoskop plant-colour system and a seminar called elixier der natur, which covers application, client advice and selling. It also offers individual coaching and two-day training sessions held in the client's own salon.

The brand's homepage devotes a long passage to packaging, opening with the remark that no packaging at all would naturally be the best packaging. HERBANIMA uses recyclable PET bottles and sets out why it prefers them to the alternatives.

On glass, the company argues that it is heavy to transport, energy-intensive to produce and recycle, and unsuited to refilling because reusable containers need chemical cleaning; it also states that EU rules have long restricted glass in wet rooms. On aluminium, it points to the energy used in refining bauxite and to the environmental cost of hydropower plants built for smelting in Iceland. The site further asserts, as "proven", that aluminium places a heavy burden on the human body, naming dementia and Parkinson's disease, but it cites no study for this [1]. On so-called bioplastics, it argues that they cannot go into organic waste bins and that their raw materials are linked to forest clearance and monoculture farming.

PET, in the company's words, is chosen for reasons that are "varied and/or banal": the raw material is plentiful, light and safe to transport, and needs little energy to process. HERBANIMA says it keeps looking for economically and ecologically better alternatives and will switch as soon as it finds one.

Herba Anima is active. The Swiss website invites hairdressers to book a place at the next HERBANIMA seminar in 2026 [1], and both the Austrian and Swiss sites run online shops. Some of its public channels are less current: the newest post on the Swiss site's blog dates from July 2020 [5], and as of September 2026 the imSalon seminar page listed no upcoming dates.

The brand's visible footprint is small and concentrated in Austria and Switzerland, with the owning company and training academy in Vienna and a general distributor serving the Swiss market. There is no evidence of distribution beyond German-speaking Europe.