Harper’s Bazaar Qatar Summer Issue 2025 Cover Star: Mona Kattan On Her Next Move
Kayali’s perfume princess is ready to take on the world solo, one spritz at a time…
In the now notoriously crowded fragrance field, it has taken just seven years – notwithstanding an epidemic – for Kayali to expand to over 30 countries. The statistics are staggering when it comes to this Middle Eastern disruptor. By the end of last year, the perfume line recorded 100 per cent retail growth, thanks to the expansion of its global partnership with Sephora.
Since this April, Brazilians can now buy the Dubai-based brand in-store, following in the footsteps of their Mexican neighbours who discovered the line in 2024. And there are plans for a global website that’ll fully integrate the Kayali community. Pretty impressive given this venture started out as Mona Kattan’s intensely personal passion project, nurtured within the Huda Beauty family – from which it was seemingly suddenly set free in February of this year.
For fans, the news that Kayali was ‘officially breaking up’ with Huda Beauty was a shock. The social media announcement by the till-now inseparable sisters, shared to over 57 million followers on Instagram, explained that it was time Mona concentrated on her love for luxurious scents. Huda, 41, cheered on her sibling’s next chapter, saying it was time to “bring your vision to life limitlessly, without anybody holding you back.”
During our Bazaar Qatar shoot, it is clear that Mona has done just that. Flanked by her close-knit team, espresso in hand, the fragrant Iraqi-American entrepreneur is ready to write her next chapter.
This parting might have been professional, but given the familial ties, surely it was personal too? “Becoming independent from my family, it’s been a journey,” she sighs. “It’s been something that I’ve actually been working on for a long time now. I started therapy in 2019; that was when I realised I was co-dependent. It was actually insane, Storehow co-dependent I was. When I created my vision board, my goals, my life planning – it was all connected to my family. I was 34. I had no idea before. It was an epiphany. I realised I’ve got to change this. This is not healthy.”
The now 39-year-old muses, “It was probably the most with Huda because we grew up so close together. As the youngest in the family, my parents always sheltered me. We were foreigners in America so they insisted we go everywhere together. I was always in her shadow; they did not let me have friends unless she was their friend. I understand why they did it. They were away from home; they felt safer that way.”
The downsides? “It creates a lot of frustration because if others don’t want to do what you want to do, then you don’t do it at all. I wanted to carve out an independent path.” And although fans felt it was sudden, “It’s been something I’ve actually been working on for over five years. When I first realised I was co-dependent, I didn’t think it would ever be possible to separate from the family. We had done everything jointly together. Everything had been built together. It’s like building a building – then separating it. It took a long time, lots of planning and lots of hard work.”
And 2025 felt like the right time. “All the stars aligned,” Mona explains. “We had to plan for our previous investors – who had committed to Huda Beauty for seven years – to exit contractually. So, I was like, ‘I have an idea. How about me and the new investors go our own way?’ I wanted independence from my family. And Huda Beauty could become fully independent, because Huda really wanted to become family-owned again. So, it was a reshuffling of all the different parties, but it solved everybody’s problems.”
Mona’s dreamy wedding – shared exclusively with Harper’s Bazaar Bride in 2022 – was perhaps another trigger, given she had formed her own new familial unit with husband Hassan Elamin. “I realised that if I ever wanted to have a healthy, normal life with my future partner, and hopefully have a family one day I had to build my own path, have my own future.”
It’s clear that this liberation has opened up Mona’s horizons, on multiple levels. “Now I finally have that CEO position, I manage everything on my own. It’s a lot more responsibility. It’s a lot more risk, of course, but at the end of the day I don’t have to align with so many other parties. Now I can really think: ‘What is the dream? What is the big vision? What’s my vision?’ In a lot of ways Huda and I were very similar; similar aspirations, both very hungry, both big dreamers and go-getters. But at the same time we’re very different in many ways too. I think she held me back and I think I also was being pushy and annoying.”
One of the not-so-secret keys to the sisters’ success was their ingenious harnessing of social media. Surely at some stage that became a burden, to always appear perky and switched on? “I feel that even outside of social media,” Mona immediately laughingly retorts. “That’s always been my personality. I’ve never been the kind of person who wants to bring people down. I like lifting people up. Even if I’m going through tough times, I don’t usually pour my troubles out to too many people. There’s a select few that I get advice from or vent to, but in general, I try to lift everyone around me and solve things on my own.”
The fact that her team volunteer to turn up an hour early to ensure everything is perfect by the time she enters the studio, and run to hug her at her arrival, shows the loyalty she engenders. “Even though I’m no longer working with my immediate blood family and that business, my team is like my family – I feel very close to them. They’d describe me as a passionate, obsessed teddy bear who is really loving, very determined to do the best I possibly can.”
This team is intrinsic to ensuring the 3.5 million eyes on Mona are constantly engaged. “Social media is one of the hardest parts of the job because it’s a beast and it changes every day. What works now might not even work later today. It’s just so confusing.” Boundaries also get blurred in this field.
Although Mona admits to being an open book – who has even been approached in bathrooms to take selfies – those close to her value their privacy. “My husband doesn’t like to share too much,” she notes. “My mum doesn’t like to share too much. So out of respect for them, I try to like tone it down when it comes to them. I personally don’t mind about sharing everything. I like when people share a lot, but I try my best to be thoughtful of others.”
This frankness of character is infinitely endearing, insightful and perhaps another aspect of her people-pleasing. When the subject of therapy is broached – something that not many like to discuss – Mona is candid in that respect too. “I’ve always been obsessed with personal development, but I waited very late in life to go for therapy. I was 13 when I went through my first depression, when I moved from Tennessee to Massachusetts – it was so hard. It was a culture shock. I was young, in my last year of Junior High. I got obsessed with Tony Robbins; I read all his books, got all his CDs… I was a little bit scared to be vulnerable.
It was a friend who just pushed me into therapy probably around October 2019. It was like opening a can of worms. Covid happened shortly after I started it and then I discovered so many different therapists. Everybody I met, I’d be like: ‘Who’s your therapist? Give them to me! I want to build my Rolodex.’ I obsess over things a lot. If I like something, I really get into it. I now do a lot of work on myself and I really regret not starting earlier.”
The learning curve was steep, with a lot of insights about her strengths and weaknesses coming hard and fast. “There have been a lot more failures than successes,” Mona says self-deprecatingly. “When it comes to personal successes, I would say my biggest one is just not giving up. Most people just give up too soon on everything, and I think that that’s one thing I’m proud of: my perseverance, relentlessness and always pushing through even the hardest of times. Finding the silver lining, finding hope, and continuing when it’s really hard – and there have been a lot of times when it’s been really, really hard.”
She doesn’t shirk from her failures. “I could write a book about all the failures – probably a lot of books about them. When I launched Kayali, I was very naive and I didn’t do enough homework. I thought that because of my experience with Huda Beauty, I could launch it the same way and it would work. It did not. For the first two years, it was really struggling. Two and a half years in, we needed to make it or break it. I needed to focus fully on Kayali; that’s part of the reason why I decided to carve out this independent journey. I think I was failing at both [Huda Beauty and Kayali]. I wasn’t doing my best because I divided my efforts. I was driving Huda crazy by trying to do everything with her, and I wasn’t doing anything in Kayali without her. I was holding myself back. That’s definitely one of my biggest failures; not being more empowered. And not doing my homework. In any new venture, you always have to think about what could go wrong. I’m naturally an optimist, so I always think about all of the things that could go right. Now I’ve learnt to think more about what could go wrong.”
There’s a lot going right at the moment. Either through canny ‘homework’ or instinct, she’s managed to capture the zeitgeist when it comes to perfumery, and Kayali’s market share – of a burgeoning industry – is on the rise. “I like to create an emotion. A lot of [the scents] are about my life. Like, for example, Yum Boujee Marshmallow. My husband’s nickname for me is marshmallow. Yum Pistachio Gelato is my favourite dessert. They’re all very personal. I need to feel like they’re different from what’s out there.” The fact they’ve tapped into gourmand notes, like her bestselling Vanilla 28 – hugely popular in America, Kayali’s number one market, is an added bonus.
But even though her bank accounts may be buttressed by dollars from overseas, she’s intensely proud of the line’s link to her home city. That is what differentiates her brand. “The story is really inspired by being in Dubai. There’s a fragrance culture here, in this part of the world, the way people use fragrance is so different. I wanted a brand inspired by the region, but to make it very global and to share these rituals with the world. Because I was mesmerised by people in the region and how they use perfume. It’s so intentional and it’s so different. Dubai is becoming a perfume capital.”
Before signing off, I need to know the truth behind the myth; does she really have 4,500 bottles in her fragrance library? “I think we’re at 5,000 now,” she smiles. “We’re aiming to get into the Guinness Book of World Records before the end of the year.”
Photography by Michel Takla Styling by Nour Bou Ezz Words by Natasha Faraque. Make-Up: Michel Kiwarkis. Hair: Sebastian Iskander. Senior Producer: Steff Hawker. Styling Assistant: Dalia Redai. Lighting Assistant: Scar Salario
From Harper’s Bazaar Qatar Summer 2025 Issue.