Dubai, UAE — Mona Kattan, the Dubai-based fragrance entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Huda Beauty, is having a breakout stretch. Her perfume label, Kayali, has quietly crossed the $200 million mark in global net sales, cemented its independence from the Huda Beauty empire, and turned a once-discontinued scent into one of 2026’s biggest beauty comeback stories. For a region increasingly defined by its self-made women founders, Mona Kattan is fast becoming the name investors, retailers and fragrance lovers cannot stop talking about.
The story of Mona Kattan’s rise is, at its core, a Middle Eastern business growth story. It combines a family brand built from nothing, a private-equity-backed spinoff, a direct-to-consumer pivot, and a viral, community-led marketing win — all inside eighteen months. Few founders in the Gulf’s beauty sector have moved this fast, and fewer still have done it while staying so visibly close to the community that made them famous in the first place. Analysts tracking the region’s consumer economy say her trajectory offers a rare, well-documented case study in how a personality-led brand can graduate into an institutionally backed global company without losing its founder’s voice.
Who Is Mona Kattan? The Woman Redefining Middle East Beauty
Mona Kattan was born in Oklahoma to Iraqi parents and grew up between the United States and the Gulf before studying finance and briefly working in investment banking. Long before she became a household name, she ran a PR and business consultancy and later co-founded a beauty salon — early ventures that sharpened her instinct for brand-building. In 2013, she joined her sister Huda to launch Huda Beauty in Dubai, a cosmetics line that would eventually become one of the most recognisable names in global beauty.
While Huda Beauty made its name in make-up, Mona Kattan’s real obsession was always scent. In 2018, she channelled that passion into Kayali, a fragrance house built around the distinctly Middle Eastern ritual of layering multiple scents to build a personal signature. The name itself, translating to “my imagination” in Arabic, was a signal of how personal the project had always been for its founder.
Mona Kattan’s Bold Split From Huda Beauty Explained
For years, Kayali operated as an offshoot of Huda Beauty. That changed in early 2025, when Mona Kattan and her sister formally separated the two businesses. Huda Beauty sold its ownership stake in Kayali, allowing her to take full control as chief executive and co-owner alongside growth-equity firm General Atlantic. In parallel, Huda Beauty bought out its own minority investor, returning that business to full founder ownership under Huda Kattan.
Announcing the split, Huda Kattan called it a “pivotal moment” for her sister’s brand, while Mona Kattan described the transition as the start of an entirely new chapter. The separation was more than a paperwork exercise — it gave her the freedom to chase fragrance-specific growth without being tied to the strategy of a make-up house, and it gave Kayali the standalone structure that serious global investors wanted to see before committing fresh capital.
Mona Kattan’s Kayali Crosses the $200 Million Sales Mark
The bet has paid off. Industry estimates now place Mona Kayali’s global net sales at roughly $200 million for 2025, built on the enduring popularity of its gourmand “Eden” fruit franchise and its oud-driven “Oudgasm” line. Mona Kattan has repeatedly credited the brand’s community for that growth, pointing to unusually high repurchase rates as fans buy the same scent in multiple sizes or “layer” different fragrances to create something unique to them.
That growth trajectory places Mona Kattan among a small group of Middle Eastern founders who have built genuinely global consumer brands from a Dubai base, rather than importing an international label into the region. Kayali fragrances are now sold across Sephora doors in the United States, the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, alongside a fast-growing footprint across the GCC, where scent layering was already a deeply rooted cultural practice long before it became a global retail trend.
Mona Kattan Launches Kayali.com and Revives Cult-Favourite Musk | 12
October 2025 marked another milestone for the founder: the launch of Kayali’s first fully dedicated e-commerce platform, Kayali.com, rolling out first in the United States and the United Kingdom before expanding to the UAE, France, Canada and Australia. The site gave her brand a direct relationship with its fanbase for the first time, complete with a “Fragrance Finder” discovery tool built around scent layering.
To mark the launch, Mona Kattan brought back Musk | 12, a discontinued scent that fans had spent years requesting online. The comeback campaign, shaped almost entirely by fan comments and videos demanding the fragrance’s return, turned into one of the most talked-about beauty relaunches of the season and pulled in a wave of new attention for her growing fragrance universe. Industry watchers noted that the relaunch generated organic buzz on social platforms without the brand paying for the initial wave of coverage, a marketing outcome most legacy fragrance houses struggle to replicate.
General Atlantic Backs Mona Kattan’s Vision for Global Growth
Her partnership with General Atlantic is central to what comes next. The growth-equity firm, which co-owns Kayali alongside Mona Kattan, has pointed to fragrance as one of the fastest-growing segments in global beauty and has pledged fresh resources to expand the brand’s international footprint and accelerate new product launches. Executives at the firm have credited her with building a brand that “resonates across generations and cultures,” a rare achievement in a category as crowded as fine fragrance.
For Mona Kattan, the backing means faster access to capital for retail expansion, product development and marketing — the kind of firepower that turns a beloved regional label into a genuine global contender against legacy fragrance houses built over a century, not a decade.
Why Mona Kattan’s Success Matters for Arab Women in Business
Her ascent lands at a moment when Middle Eastern businesswomen are increasingly running boards, signing cheques and leading listed companies rather than sitting on the sidelines of family wealth. Mona Kattan is frequently cited alongside other prominent Arab founders as evidence that the region’s beauty and consumer sectors can produce billion-dollar-adjacent brands led by women who built them from scratch, rather than inherited them.
Her journey — from an Oklahoma-born daughter of Iraqi immigrants to one of the most influential fragrance entrepreneurs in the world — also carries symbolic weight across the Gulf’s startup ecosystem, where young founders regularly cite Mona Kattan as proof that a Dubai-based brand can compete on the biggest stages in beauty, from Sephora shelves in Paris to red carpets in Los Angeles.
What’s Next for Mona Kattan and the Kayali Brand
She has signalled that more fragrance launches, wider Kayali.com market expansion and deeper retail partnerships are all on the horizon. With General Atlantic’s backing secured and full ownership clarity resolved, Mona Kattan is now positioned to push Kayali further into markets across Europe, North America and the Gulf simultaneously — a scale of ambition rarely attempted by a fragrance brand still closely tied to a single founder’s personal story and public presence.
Whatever comes next, Mona Kattan’s Kayali has already proven a broader point echoing across the region’s business press: Middle Eastern founders, and particularly its women entrepreneurs, are no longer building brands for the region alone. They are building for the world, on their own terms and under their own names.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mona Kattan
Who is Mona Kattan? Mona Kattan is a Dubai-based entrepreneur, co-founder of Huda Beauty and founder and CEO of the fragrance brand Kayali.
How much is Mona Kattan’s Kayali worth today? Industry estimates put Kayali’s global net sales at approximately $200 million for 2025, under her leadership as CEO and co-owner alongside General Atlantic.
Did Mona Kattan leave Huda Beauty? She sold her Huda Beauty stake in Kayali in early 2025, making the fragrance brand fully independent, while remaining connected to her sister Huda Kattan’s cosmetics company as a separate, founder-led business.
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