Rare Beauty is currently the most popular beauty brand available on the market. And it is not limited to approaches that focus more on its celebrity than the product; the brand has a platform that evolved on celebrity endorsement concepts to form a new differentiator. It has a much more personal approach, and this became the foundation of why the celebrity wants to make business.  

The beauty brand called Rare Beauty, founded by actress and singer Selena Gomez, was launched in September 2020. Since then, the young entrepreneur has been relentlessly striving to destroy the unrealistic standards of beauty, and it turned out that she is well aware of this influence herself. She was first introduced to the world of makeup at the age of seven. 

The reason was her acting career. She started working very early for Disney channel, and makeup was a necessary part of the filming process. Selena was so small, but already on set, and working as an adult. Make-up artists would do her makeup every day, and, according to her, she started to look older. Later, the problems only got worse for the young actress. Being  surrounded by beauty trends on a daily basis, she now started to feel herself as looking too young, now she needed to create another image of herself. She was just gradually stepping into a long and battling journey of daunting her own beauty.  

And exactly because of how difficult it was for Selena to accept herself, she decided to help people with psychological problems through her beauty company. Being able to create a safe space for people who don't necessarily want to change their face, was the most rewarding part of creating Rare Beauty for Gomez. She wants to encourage you to accept yourself for who you are, without changing it. However, the singer also admits that the brand is suitable for everyone. If you like to use a lot of makeup, that’s fine too, because the line is aimed at the unity of consciousness, body, and soul. In other words, Rare Beauty is a brand for anyone who feels it's okay to look different.

Rare Beauty is much more than just a cosmetics brand, and one of the priority projects of it is The Rare Impact Fund. It is a project of the Hopewell fund (a non-profit left-leaning advocacy organization). The CEO of The Rare Impact Fund is Scott Friedman, and it was created to make a tangible impact through increasing awareness of mental health resources, and supporting under-searched communities. This charitable foundation aims to raise $100 million (in the form of things like grants and donations) over the next 10 years and donate it to support mental health clinics and services around the world. For instance, from the very first sale of Rare Beauty products, a 1 percent profit share goes directly to The Rare Impact Fund, along with other contributions from partners and other foundations. 

 However, oftentimes when a celebrity begins a charity it is often in order to get good PR or even to be exempt from certain taxes. It is also important to note that The Rare Impact Fund is not just a charity. It is a sponsored project created by the Hopewell Fund which itself is the charity. 

Hopewell Fund is also entwined with two other companies like Arabella Advises LLC and New Venture Fund. Arabella is known for sponsoring charitable groups for raising money for political lobbying. But it is not something unusual, we have a lot of these companies globally to directly fund politicians. But why is Rare Beauty so aligned with the company with other ambitions and not created as a separate charity? 

Another issue with Rare Beauty is how Selen Gomez is heavily tied to the company’s image. Rare Beauty has a huge emphasis on the former Disney star herself, as it even named exactly like her album “Rare”. Potentially, it can give a huge boost to the company, but can also be a point of weakness if Selena does ever fall out of public favor. 

Nevertheless, the brand has become an epitome of the importance of mental health. With a questionable funding project or not, the mission of Rare Beauty is still to remind people to express their individuality without looking at unrealistic beauty expectations that our society dictates. The brand wants us to stop comparing ourselves to each other and just recognize our uniqueness. We don’t need to evaluate ourselves by photos, likes or comments. The brand wants to remind us that it is not about how other people see you, it's about how you see yourself.