We’re claiming it now—March 2023 is the year we as women advocate even more for our health and well-being. It’s Women’s History Month and we want to recognize and support women-owned brands dedicated to advocating for change and transparency in the wellness industry. Everyone has been through a lot in the past few years. It’s safe to say that we’ve learned just how essential our wellness is to live a happier, healthier and more fulfilled life.
Taking care of your body, mind, and spirit can positively impact your overall well-being and lead to increased happiness, reduced stress, and improved physical health. These intuitive wellness brands are committed to prioritizing your wellness goals with high-quality products that make a difference. Whether you’re choosing to buy from female creators and entrepreneurs, donating to nonprofits that champion women’s rights, or educating yourself on women’s issues, you are supporting and prioritizing women’s health everywhere—especially your own. Here are 10 women-owned wellness brands that cater to different wellness needs including self-care, nutrition, fitness and more.
Top women-owned wellness brands of 2023:
Frenshe
Owner: Ashley Tisdale
If you’ve been to Target at any point in the last few months, you’ve most likely seen the brand Frenshe front and center in the beauty aisle. But this brand is more than your average celebrity launch.
About The Business:
With a focus on mental health and wellness, the brand uses a cross-category approach in simple rituals that nourish and care for your well-being through the power of natural and mood-boosting scents. Beyond the product lines sold exclusively at Target, Frenshe is an entire website cataloged with blog posts and recommendations on lifestyle, wellness, interiors and beauty topics that answer questions about how to live more ethically, sustainably and authentically as possible.
Why They Made The List:
During the pandemic, we all struggled to gain some semblance of normalcy in our lives and finding that balance between work, personal and social was nearly impossible. It was in 2020 that Tisdale began creating her products that could help improve one’s mood with clean ingredients. The debut collection had 45 drops, including body washes, bath bombs, hair and body oils, hair masks, hand serums and more. The aim is to make wellness rituals accessible and affordable for everybody at any time.
Goldmine
Owner: Rachael Gorjestan
As women, we’re always the ones to take care of everyone around us. Whether it’s in your nature or more of a nurture thing, you know how easily fatigue and overwhelm come when we’re not listening to our bodies. With so many women asking themselves “Why am I so tired?,” Goldmine found the answer in body-healing adaptogens.
About The Business:
Inspired by burnout and adrenal fatigue, Gorjestan began researching and experimenting with herbs and botanicals that could help her body heal and balance from the inside out. Goldmine is a 100% organic, sustainably sourced, women-owned and women-operated company with a mission to help every woman benefit from organic ingredients that taste great and make them feel great.
Why They Made The List:
As a certified nutritionist, RYT-certified yoga instructor and student of herbalism, Gorjestan understands how easy it is to neglect yourself when your responsibilities at home, work, and school dictate how much time you can give to your health. Not one to shy away from entrepreneurship, she also brings health and wellness to her local community through her San Fransisco-based weekly meal delivery service, The Cupboard. With a team of seasoned chefs and holistic nutritionists like herself, she has fed nutritious meals to SF families since 2016. Whether it’s nature or nurture, we love to highlight a woman whose mission is to do both in the wellness space.
Peak + Valley
Owner: Nadine Joseph
More than feeling good on the outside, wellness is also about helping your body be more balanced on the inside. To do that effectively, it’s just as important to go deeper into why you need healing as it is to know where those healing elements are coming from.
About The Business:
In 2015, neuroscience researcher Nadine Joseph began to feel the effects of stress, burnout, and overwhelm. She realized there had to be a better solution to help her body through those tough times. After finding questionable things in the herbal trade industry, she founded Peak + Valley to answer the questions that were unanswered at the time: where did these herbal remedies come from? Were the farmers using sustainable practices? Were they compensated fairly? What culture and tradition were these remedies rooted in? How could that connection improve her overall wellness? These questions will always be answered in Peak + Valley’s herbal products with holistic health, mindful sourcing and science-backed research at the core of their values.
Why They Made The List:
Joseph’s focus on transparency is refreshing with an entire breakdown of the sourcing, farming and processing practices as well as purchasing criteria on the website. The centuries-old healing herbal blends of Chinese medicines and Ayurvedic remedies are carefully crafted to respect tradition. At the same time, every farmer and producing partner is provided with fair wages that positively impact the local farmers and empower community development, which often means women supporting women on these farmlands.
The Modern Woman Planner
Owner: Joselyn Martinez
Planning anything in the last few years has seemed like a chore in and of itself. Whether you’re a mom juggling family events or going solo and trying to balance your health and professional goals, having a more sustainable health and wellness lifestyle starts with a plan.
About The Business:
From her experience as an online business coach and lifestyle designer, Martinez found no way to find balance in her life if she didn’t write down her goals, tasks, and daily reminders. It may sound simple enough, but the solution went further than simple binders. The Modern Woman Planner is an entire lifestyle brand that helps women design their ideal life in a structured and tangible way. The planners go beyond lines on a page—they have layouts with vision boarding, goal setting, inspirational quotes and affirmations, and habit trackers. It’s also aligned directly with her 6-week intensive course, The Modern Woman Mindset, which shares valuable one-on-one coaching sessions to help the busiest women find a healthier lifestyle in their personal and professional lives.
Why They Made The List:
Martinez is a first-generation Dominican-American entrepreneur based in New York City, which adds to her desire to help other women design their version of success. After going through the traumatic loss of her father at age 9, she has advocated for justice and is a staunch promoter of personal development tools to find it. Her perseverance through grief and adversity showed as she discovered her father’s murderer and helped bring him to justice. It’s truly a testament to the fact that women can be the catalyst for change they choose to be.
Bathe Brand
Owner: Tiffany Brown
Cleanliness should be more than a part of your routine; it should be a ritual that centers you. Simple ingredients crafted with intention can make all the difference when you’re looking for a way to start your own healing process.
About The Business:
After struggling with a painful skin disorder, Brown realized that how she cleansed her body was a big factor in how comfortable she felt in her skin. Finding the connection between emotions and identity, she began to see what whole foods could help her heal beyond prescribed medications that didn’t resolve the root cause of the problem. After being discriminated against and dismissed by dermatologists for her dark skin, she built her inclusive wellness brand, Bathe Brand, with a focus on restoring the skin you’re in by taking care of the body you have.
Why They Made The List:
As a Black queer woman, Brown has had to overcome adversity and learn to love herself and live her best life in spite of it. By taking time for herself in the most uncertain times in her life, she has been able to create a product that helps others start their own wellness journey through cleansing body and spirit. Bathe Brand’s Anointing Oil has been receiving accolades since its launch including a coveted wellness feature in Goop by their Senior Beauty Editor. Wellness brands with a mission to find a solution to a problem so many ignore is exactly why she’s on our list.
Maude
Owner: Éva Goicochea
As women, our reproductive system deserves more attention for how it affects our emotional and physical health. From our menstrual cycle to fertility to our immune system, how our body reacts to stress is directly linked to how well we can balance our hormones and care for our sexual wellness.
About The Business:
Goicochea was born in New Mexico and raised in California and Michigan, areas known for incredible innovation across many industries. She spent her early career advocating for healthcare legislation aimed at forward-thinking companies looking to help solve common wellness issues. Maude was launched in 2018 on a mission to bring affordable, modern and effective sexual wellness products to everybody who’s ever been confused or ill-informed about outdated and non-inclusive products. Since then, Maude has expanded into a wellness lifestyle website with The Maudern blog discussing modern intimacy issues and solutions through the arts, science and relationships.
Why They Made The List:
Maude is on a mission to help provide comprehensive and inclusive sexual health education for everyone. Their advocacy partnerships include SEICUS, which leads the state-based network, the Sex Ed Policy Action Council, by focusing on advancing cross-movement federal sexual education and reproductive freedom in legislation. They also focus on access to sex education through their partnership with community youth leaders, parents and healthcare providers in Advocates for Youth that champion programs to support access to honest extensive, confidential, and affordable sexual health information for young people everywhere. Lastly, the Peer Health Exchange is all about advancing sexual health equity by creating educational opportunities for college peers to share tools and resources to help young people learn to make healthy decisions now and in the future.
Becalia Botanicals
Owner: Jazmin Guerrero
Oftentimes, the habits we form around wellness come from the generations before us. Our ancestry helps us awaken our roots and teaches us how to care for ourselves while our personal experiences breathe new life into our health and well-being.
About The Business:
Becalia Botanicals is focused on merging natural beauty and conscious culture to help you create a wellness ritual of your own. With skincare, body care and home care products, Guerrero creates natural formulations rooted in cultural tradition and our modern-day needs. She started her wellness brand in her kitchen in Nov. 2018. She has gained acclaim throughout the community of women who love that personal connection in every botanical recipe from her Mexican culture. From bath soaks to body oils to face masks to candles to beauty tools, Becalia Botanicals has something to help anyone looking to add some culture to their wellness journey.
Why They Made The List:
A first-generation Mexican-American, Guerrero understands what it feels like to be disconnected from her culture. Growing up far away from home, she realized she could keep her culture and family heritage close by reconnecting her senses with the skin and body care rituals passed down from generation to generation through her Mexican heritage. She speaks to a voice that many of us Latinas know well, which is this idea of “ni de aqui, ni de alla” (which in English translates to “not from here, not from there”). It’s the feeling of being untethered or belonging to any one culture or community because you are part of two or more, which can alter your self-worth and impact your mental health and well-being. Guerrero is sharing that source of connection and empowerment she got from the women in her life like her Abuela Rebeca, mother Otilia and Tia Celia.
PopFlex Active
Owner: Cassey Ho
Wellness is about finding a lifestyle that fits you. That’s why PopFlex Active was created—to help make your health goals more accessible, keep your fitness journey more fun and create wellness practices that are more attainable.
About The Business:
It started with Blogilates back in 2009 as Cassey Ho documented her health and fitness journey with pilates, bodybuilding, nutrition and recovery. Though there were pitfalls, every lesson learned was shared with her audience of women who weren’t sure where to start and what could work for them. On a constant search for balance in her wellness routine, Ho realized there were so many missing pieces in women’s health that she could fill with positive and empowering messages to women everywhere. In 2016, PopFlex Active was launched with a mission to inspire women to find joy in fitness with athleisure apparel, yoga mats, stylish dumbbells, water bottles, cute gym and lifestyle bags, fitness planners and more. There’s even a complementary line of products sold exclusively at Target. The innovative products encourage movement for every stage, support inclusivity for everybody, and community for every woman.
Why They Made The List:
Beyond being the #1 Pilates instructor in the world with over 2 billion views on YouTube and 12 million followers across her social media channels for over a decade, the founder and CEO is also a creative athleisure designer and incredible entrepreneur who listens to the feedback from the women following her brand and delivers innovative designs to solve their problems. She supports women’s health and is constantly creating personal challenges to help women who don’t know where to start on their wellness journey. Ho gives back through things like The Dream Grant, which saw one $5k grant given to each of five women who didn’t feel supported in their dream of entrepreneurship or didn’t have the means to help their local communities.
Aisle
Owner: Suzanne Siemens & Madeleine Shaw
Inclusivity is about finding the best ways to help others be part of the conversation and the solution to issues facing them. Aisle is on a mission to demystify and destigmatize our bodies’ menstruation without leaving anyone out.
About The Business:
Aisle’s brand story began 30 years ago when Shaw created her first pair of period underwear in 1993. Six years later, she met Siemens at a community leadership conference which led to a common ground of friendship and business partnership the following year when they launched their first company, Lunapads. Ten years later, they realized the major gap in their product language and that the industry as a whole wasn’t inclusive. They put out a statement of trans inclusion and worked to use non-gender language to help everyone feel seen and be able to learn vital health information about their cycle, no matter their gender. They created adjustable and comfortable period underwear for anyone with a period with material that has been lab-tested and verified by a third party for high performance and environmental standards. Honored as one of B Corp’s Best for the World products from 2016 to 2019, Aisle has evolved and now offers adjustable period underwear, cups, and other care products to every body that menstruates.
Why They Made The List:
Leave it to women to help elevate the voices of those unheard and unseen by most of society. As they built their brand, they supported worldwide menstrual health and equity projects and initiatives in Africa through donations. Shaw and Siemens have seen problems in the world and wanted those who struggle with finding period care to have something made for them. Because they’re constantly evolving their approach to building a wellness brand for one of the most private bodily functions we can experience, we want to show just how much good this Canadian company is doing for everyone who needs it.
BudzyBox
Owner: Shatoia Robinson
CBD has become a popular staple in the health and wellness industry in just the past few years. What’s really been catching people’s eye is how women have quickly become the innovators of the space with inclusive ways to reach people who’ve never been able to experience it safely before.
About The Business:
BudzyBox is currently the only Black woman-owned CBD subscription box on the market today. This wellness brand is on a mission to help you reach your wellness goals with an endless curation of premium food, fashion, and lifestyle tools that incorporate the benefits of CBD throughout the wellness shop. As a medical device representative for an endocrinologist’s office, Robinson experienced the benefits of CBD and began to advocate for CBD and created a way to help destigmatize its use. The subscription ships monthly with three to four CBD-infused products in every box that offers wellness, beauty, science, and culinary treats including teas, chocolates, face masks, calming patches, body balms and more.
Why They Made The List:
Shatoia Robinson is an incredible woman with a vision for the future. Her goal with BudzyBox is to tear down those walls that stop us from feeling better. The mission is to empower women through the education of cannabidiol, which helps break down the stereotypes associated with CBD use and helps us all heal from the inside and on the outside. She’s focused on giving access to high-quality products backed by scientific research and curated for anyone who wants a touch of luxury and nature on their wellness journey.
