SHE LEFT A DECADE ON WALL STREET TO BOTTLE CULTURE, MEMORY, AND ENERGY
Most people don’t walk away from a Managing Director seat in investment banking to start over in beauty — but Malaika Jones did, and Black women have been smelling the results ever since. As the founder and CEO behind Brown Girl Jane fragrance, Jones has built a fine fragrance house that treats scent not as chemistry, but as culture. Her journey is one more chapter in the global story of Black entrepreneurs building businesses on their own terms, alongside the founders featured in Black Entrepreneurs Worldwide: An International Spotlight.
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From Trading Floors to Fine Fragrance
Malaika Jones spent more than a decade as a Managing Director in investment banking and trading on Wall Street before founding Brown Girl Jane, according to the brand’s own about page. A Spelman College graduate who completed Executive Education at Harvard Business School, she carried financial discipline and a global worldview — shaped by formative time in London, Brazil, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and the United States — into her second act as a beauty entrepreneur. Her leadership has earned her a spot on Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Powerful Women.
Jones didn’t build the brand alone. She launched it in January 2020 with her sister, Nia Jones, who serves as Chief Impact Officer, and fellow Spelman alumna Tai Beauchamp, the company’s Chief Brand Officer. All three founders are Spelman graduates — two biological sisters, three Spelman sisters — and that bond is baked into the company’s identity.
“Being founded by three Black women — two of whom are biological sisters and all of whom are Spelman sisters — there is a profound recognition of who we are individually but also who we are in the power of our collective,” Beauchamp told xoNecole in an interview about the brand.
Scent as Wellness, Culture as the Ingredient
Brown Girl Jane began as a plant-based wellness and beauty brand, but in 2023 the company pivoted decisively to fine fragrance — a move chronicled by Beauty Independent as the brand began fundraising to scale its vision. Today the company describes itself as a fine fragrance house redefining what scent can mean.
On the brand’s about page, Malaika Jones puts the philosophy simply: “We don’t bottle notes or destinations, we bottle aura, indulgence, and worlds you can feel.” The house credo continues: “We believe pleasure is a right, not a luxury. Fragrance is not chemistry, it is culture, memory, and energy you carry.” And in words attributed to the founder herself: “Every bottle should pulse with culture. Ours do.”
Building the Table, Not Just a Seat
The founders’ ambitions extend well beyond their own bottles. In June 2020 they launched the “Brown Girl Swap,” an initiative asking consumers to replace at least five of their go-to products with brands owned by Black women — a campaign later amplified through a partnership with Birchbox. The message was direct: Black women are the largest segment of new business owners in the U.S., yet the most underfunded.
Brown Girl Jane then teamed with SheaMoisture to launch a $250,000 fund supporting Black-owned beauty brands. “Enduring change requires an evergreen, multifaceted program to begin creating equity in this industry,” Malaika Jones said when the fund was announced. Recognition followed: the brand received a $100,000 Sephora beauty grant — chosen from nearly 300 applicants — at the 15 Percent Pledge Gala, and Refinery29 named Brown Girl Jane its Beauty Innovator of the Year in 2020.
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