From Personal Pain to Beauty Gain: The Story Behind Tanya du Bois and Naturals Beauty

When Tanya du Bois couldn’t find the products she felt were right for her son, she began making her own in her kitchen. Eighteen years later, that homemade solution has grown into Naturals Beauty and has just earned her the 2026 Nedbank Business Ignite title.

There was no business plan, no investor and no carefully considered five-year strategy. Just a mother with a young son diagnosed with autism and a problem she could not solve on the shop shelves.

The paediatric neurologist had advised the family to look closely at the products they were using every day and reduce their exposure to unnecessary chemicals in things like cleaning products and food preservatives, body lotions and personal-care products in their bathroom.

Tanya started reading labels and quickly found that she had more questions than answers. When she went looking for natural alternatives that were effective, affordable and readily available in South Africa, she came up short.

“I was stuck. There were no products on the shelf that could help my son, only potentially harm him, so I had to take things into my own hands.”

Which she did, despite having no background in cosmetic science. What she did have was curiosity, determination, and a 1960’s natural home-remedies book that had been passed down to her by her grandmother, which she used as her starting point.

She began experimenting in her kitchen, making small batches of body lotions, washes and butters. She read, mixed, tested, adjusted, and kept records, trying to find something she felt comfortable using on her young family.

There was no grand ambition to build a beauty company, but very soon other mothers who were part of the autism support groups she belonged to began asking what she was using on her son.

“They were looking for the same answers that I had been and were struggling to find them. They started asking me where they could get the same products I was using,” Tanya recalls.

The question changed everything. Tanya’s simple attempt to solve a personal problem at home quickly became a small side hustle. The kitchen batches became orders and demand began to grow exponentially, eventually forcing Tanya to start thinking about whether her homemade formulations could become something more.

When a side hustle starts getting serious

Tanya knew that if Naturals Beauty was going to grow, she needed to move beyond homemade formulas, developing more sophisticated products while retaining the principles that had driven her from the beginning.

Finding the right cosmetic chemist proved to be one of the first major hurdles. For close to a year, Tanya searched for someone who understood what she was trying to build and was prepared to work with a small, values-driven natural skincare business rather than simply push her towards cheaper or easier alternatives.

There were moments when she considered walking away but eventually, she found a cosmetic chemist who understood the brief, and that relationship still holds strong today. It was an important turning point for Tanya, as Naturals Beauty was no longer simply something she made at home, but a fully fledged business with real potential.

Unexpectedly, the business has continued to grow alongside her family. When her daughter was born, Tanya developed a baby range; when her son became a teenager, a teenage skincare range followed, and when her sister and her mother began looking for more active skincare, she developed the company’s serum range.

In many ways, the business was keeping pace with the women and children who had inspired it. Today, Naturals Beauty has evolved into a substantial South African business manufacturing skincare, body care, hair care and family ranges, with more than 50 products across the board. However, the most interesting evolution is happening beyond its own shelves. Tanya has built a bespoke product-development arm that works with other businesses to create products from concept and formulation through to the finished range. It is an extension of the same instinct that started Naturals Beauty – being able to listen and identify the problem, understand what is needed and create a solution.

One of her latest projects is a collaboration with Cape Town wine estate Klein Constantia, where Naturals Beauty is developing a substantial bespoke range spanning body care, skincare and men’s grooming, scheduled to launch in November 2026.

The project is particularly close to Tanya’s heart because it incorporates the Ingredients and by-products from the winemaking process, including grape seed extract and grape-derived exfoliating material, into the formulations.

For Tanya, this is where innovation becomes interesting. “I love working with brands to find what makes them unique and then turning that story into a product. Every brand has its own identity, its own ingredients, and its own story to tell, and the exciting part for me is finding a way to bring that story to life through a product,” she says.

It is a long way from where she first started at her kitchen table, especially when you realise that Naturals Beauty has been built largely without outside investment. Tanya has repeatedly put her own money back into the business, including a significant amount to move one of the ranges from plastic to glass packaging.

It was a significant investment for a business that had spent years growing organically, but for Tanya, the decision came down to the same question she had been asking herself since the beginning: is this the right thing for the product and the customer?

The willingness to back her own convictions is part of what makes her 2026 Nedbank Business Ignite win so fitting. This year’s competition, run by Nedbank in partnership with Radio 702 and CapeTalk, centred on the theme My Pain. My Purpose. My Solution.

More than 740 entrepreneurs entered, with Tanya ultimately selected as the CapeTalk winner, with judges including Tuli Magubane believing her story embodied the theme. The prize includes a R200,000 cash injection, mentorship, national exposure and support through Nedbank’s SimplyBiz platform.

For Tanya, the recognition is not the culmination of her story, but another chapter in her journey. 

Naturals Beauty’s future is not focused on putting more products on more shelves but rather centred on creating innovative product development and helping other businesses turn their own ideas into something tangible.