Mizzou Grad Starts Black Honey Bee Cosmetics

The University of Missouri’s Tiana Glass has combined her passion for social justice with her love for feminism and self-care. The result?

Black Honey Bee Cosmetics. If you’ve never heard of it, be on the lookout. It’s a store she dreamed up in early 2016 and opened in the student center at Mizzou in late 2017.The University of Missouri’s Tiana Glass has combined her passion for social justice with her love for feminism and self-care. And the result? Black Honey Bee Cosmetics — a store she dreamed up in early 2016 and opened in the student center at Mizzou in late 2017.

Though Glass graduated in December 2017, her store continues to sell handmade vegan bath and body products, from shower gels and lotion bars to bath bombs and bubble bars. But these aren’t just smell-good products; they’re also feel-good products. Everything in the store gets its name from a part of black culture or from a famous black person. As an African-American woman, Glass is “really looking forward to women of color feeling validated and seen, as well as the business growing. I’m from Ferguson, Missouri, and this business exists because of Ferguson. My main goal is to help my community through this business by bringing black businesses back to [the area].”

Initially, Glass was a journalism major at Mizzou, consistently one of the top journalism schools in the nation. Soon into her collegiate career, she found feminism and social justice, both of which compelled her to switch from journalism to women’s and gender studies. In addition to her classwork, she was an intern at the Women’s Center on campus and advocated for social justice, always striving to get people involved and educate them about the dynamics of privilege and power.

But that’s not all. She was a Diversity Award Scholar, was a member of the LSV (“a secret women’s honor society dedicated to promoting and improving the status of women”), and was involved in promoting the success of students through MU’s Center for Academic Success & Excellence. After graduation, she began applying to graduate school, focusing on public health programs that would let her continue her research with women of color, environmental justice, and health programs.

Glass is obviously a driven individual, so when she came up with the idea for Black Honey Bee Cosmetics, nothing was going to stop her. First, she created a business plan. Then, she applied to the Missouri Student Unions Entrepreneurial Program — which decides what student-run businesses will occupy each of three available spaces in Mizzou’s student center. Once she was awarded the space, Glass, some friends, and some “worker bees” (as she calls them) got to work. “I did this from scratch,” she said. “I designed everything myself. I knew what colors I wanted, I knew what the vision was, I knew what I wanted on that wall.”

But it wasn’t all vision, color, and design. It was long days and nights, both building the store and cranking out the products that would line its shelves. Despite throwing her hands in the air and wanting to quit plenty of times, the amount of encouragement and support kept her going. And now, she says of Black Honey Bee Cosmetics, “It has been a beautiful struggle, one that I’m so proud of.” In the end, Glass hopes to “start other businesses while continuing to strive for justice for people in [her] community.”

In the SEC, It Just Means More.

To Glass, It Just Means More Empowerment for Women of Color.