Abena Boamah-Acheampong Ain’t Here for Ashiness: Leading Ethical Beauty with Ghanaian Shea Butter & Radical Supply Chain Care

---

Season 1 | Episode 23

What happens when you infuse radical transparency, ancestral ingredients, and community-rooted ethics into the beauty game? You get HanaHana Beauty—and a founder like Abena Boamah-Acheampong who's shaking the table with intention. In this dynamic episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford dives deep with Abena to explore the spiritual, political, and deeply personal layers of building a brand that refuses to compromise.

From sourcing shea butter directly from cooperatives in Ghana and paying double the asking price, to redefining what it means to sustain—not just the earth, but the people behind the product—Abena doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks it with grace and grit. This isn’t your average clean beauty convo. It’s a powerful meditation on ethical sourcing, supply chain storytelling, and dismantling beauty industry norms with the audacity to be real.

MORE ABOUT ABENA

Abena Boamah-Acheampong is the dynamic and innovative founder of Hanahana Beauty, a consciously clean skincare brand known for its commitment to sustainability, ethical sourcing, and empowering women across the globe.

An educator-turned-entrepreneur, Abena launched Hanahana from her kitchen and scaled it onto the shelves of major retailers like Ulta Beauty. The brand is beloved not only for its effective, clean body care products but also for its impact-driven mission—paying twice the fair-trade price for shea butter sourced from the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative in Ghana.

Abena is also deeply passionate about helping other founders build intentionally and sustainably. She brings her expertise in brand strategy to support emerging entrepreneurs through FNDR FWRD Lab, a community-based entrepreneurship program she created to equip founders with the tools to grow with purpose.

Abena is known for her transparent storytelling, faith-driven leadership, and ability to translate complex brand-building into actionable insights. Whether she’s sharing her founder journey or guiding others through theirs, she leads with clarity, care, and creativity.

“It was like audacity to be real. You know, I really, came into this space and the industry very like wide-eyed open and not truly understanding how people approach supply chain other than the fact that I was new to the level of understanding that the same shea butter that I grew up using was used in so many products. Abena Boamah and no one ever talked about it. And so as like a Ghanian, I was like, I kind of like was like, wait, what? This is a violation. Like y’all have to talk about this, you know? So like, I think for me, it was just like, let’s do some storytelling. ”

— Abena