Sol de Janeiro

Sol de Janeiro is an American body-care, fragrance and hair-care brand founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York [7]. Named after Rio de Janeiro and built around Brazilian beach culture, it grew from three products into a global seller led by its Brazilian Bum Bum Cream. Since November 2021 it has operated as a majority-owned subsidiary of the L'Occitane Group, which acquired an 83% stake [11]. The brand remains highly active: in the group's 2025 results it was reported as the number-one beauty brand at Sephora North America and generated close to a third of L'Occitane Group's total sales [9].

The company was co-founded by Heela Yang, who left a twelve-year corporate beauty career, together with Marc Capra and Camila Pierotti. Yang served as chief executive from the start until her departure was announced in April 2026, after which Jordan Saxemard, previously the brand's chief marketing and digital officer, was promoted to the role [9].

Before Sol de Janeiro, Heela Yang spent more than a decade in beauty marketing, including a role at Lancôme, part of L'Oréal, and a senior skincare position at Clinique under the Estée Lauder Companies. According to the CEW industry profile, she is a Harvard Business School graduate who began her career as an investment-banking analyst at Goldman Sachs before moving into cosmetics.

The founding story, as the company tells it, began when Yang left her New York career to move to Brazil with her partner and soon discovered she was pregnant. Immersed in what the brand describes as Brazil's body-positive beach culture, she resolved to build a body-care line on the idea that "beauty is an attitude, not a standard." She co-founded the company in the summer of 2015 with Marc Capra and Camila Pierotti [10]. This account is corroborated across the brand's own pages and independent trade coverage from Glossy, WWD, PR Newswire and CEW [8].

The English Wikipedia article names "Maura Jovanovich and Honor Montgomery" as founders [6]. That claim conflicts with every other source in the record — the company's About-the-Founder page, the 2021 PR Newswire release, Glossy, WWD and CEW all identify Heela Yang, Marc Capra and Camila Pierotti — and the Wikipedia entry appears to contain vandalism on personnel details.

Sources also differ on where the brand originated. The company emphasises its Brazilian inspiration, while corporate records place the founding in New York, where the business was incorporated and headquartered at 551 Fifth Avenue. Both are accurate: the concept was conceived in Brazil, but the company itself is US-based.

Sol de Janeiro launched with three products, led by the Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, and expanded to more than thirty over its first decade. In mid-2019, private-equity firm Prelude Growth Partners became its sole institutional investor, and by 2020 net sales reached roughly US$60 million [11].

On 15 November 2021, the L'Occitane Group announced it had acquired an 83% stake, in a deal reported at a US$450 million valuation; Yang stayed on as chief executive [7]. Growth accelerated afterward. In 2023 the brand reported a 174% sales increase to US$454 million for the six months ending 30 September, and it named actor Barbie Ferreira as brand ambassador in a campaign that, according to Glossy, drove a 33% overall sales increase [8]. In 2024 it was included on Fast Company's list of the most innovative companies, and Yang received the CEW UK Achiever Award. The brand marked its tenth anniversary in 2025.

Sol de Janeiro is majority-owned by the L'Occitane Group, which took its controlling stake in 2021 [11]. Within that portfolio it sits alongside L'Occitane en Provence, Melvita, Elemis and Erborian. By the group's 2025 figures, Sol de Janeiro accounted for 31.6% of L'Occitane Group's total sales of US$2.8 billion, making it a central contributor to the parent company.

The brand positions itself around joy, body acceptance and what it calls "transportive" scent. Its stated values include celebrating all body types, confidence and self-celebration, and the company frames its mission as bringing "that blissful peak summer feeling to everyone, anytime, anywhere." Products are marketed on "luscious textures" and "deeply effective" body and hair care, and the brand describes its formulations as cruelty-free and made in the United States from globally sourced ingredients.

Positioned in the prestige tier, Sol de Janeiro sells directly through its own website and through premium retailers, and much of its rise has been attributed to organic social media. Yang told Glossy that "over 90% of our growth this year is from social, and it's organic," pointing to influencer posts on TikTok, where the #soldejaneirocream hashtag drew millions of views [8].

The signature Brazilian Bum Bum Cream is the brand's hero product and, per Glossy, had been Sephora's top-selling skincare product for three years. Its scent — vanilla, salted caramel and pistachio, built on Amazonian guaraná — recurs across the range. Other notable lines include the Brazilian Crush Cheirosa '62 Hair and Body Mist, the Body Badalada lotions, Glowmotions body oil and the Cheirosa Jelly Perfume Balms, the newest fragrance format. The company groups its own developments under names such as Body Badalada and the Cheirosa fragrance line.

On sustainability, the brand has set 2030 targets that include cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 55% per pound of product, incorporating post-consumer recycled and FSC-certified packaging, and expanding a refill program. It also states that the Sol de Janeiro Foundation has committed a minimum of US$5 million over five years to biodiversity and to women's and girls' education.

Sol de Janeiro appeared on Fast Company's 2024 Most Innovative Companies list. Its founder, Heela Yang, was named to Glossy's 50 Top Changemakers in 2023 and received the CEW UK Achiever Award in 2024.

In December 2023, a rumor spread on TikTok claiming that the brand's moisturizer attracted spiders through pheromones. The company and outside experts denied the claim [6].

Sol de Janeiro is an operating, majority-owned subsidiary of the L'Occitane Group rather than an independent company. It continues to trade under its own name and remained highly active into 2026: in the group's 2025 results it was reported as the number-one beauty brand at Sephora North America and the top-selling fragrance brand on Amazon in the United States [9]. Co-founder and long-serving chief executive Heela Yang's departure was announced in April 2026, with Jordan Saxemard promoted to lead the brand. Wikipedia instead names "Honor Montgomery" as a successor chief executive [6]; this contradicts WWD's reporting and forms part of the same suspected vandalism affecting the article's founder details.