LXMI, pronounced luxe-me, is committed to three distinct brand tenets:
• Pure, rare ingredients from unique terroir
• Going beyond charity to provide work for women, and
• Natural and organic botanicals, often safe-enough-to-eat
Leila Janah founded LXMI after a chance discovery of Nilotica, LXMI's signature ingredient, at a market in Uganda. She was astounded by the rare butter's ability to transform her moisture-deprived, overly-traveled skin from lackluster to luminous. Once she learned that she could help marginalized East African women find dignified work through the wild harvesting, production and exportation of Nilotica, she knew she had to change her life to share her new skincare secret with the world.
But she didn't stop there. She went the extra mile(s) to source Nilotica Reserve™, now LXMI's exclusive form of the butter, from the highest grade nuts in the most pristine areas of the Nile River Valley. Nilotica Reserve's characteristics are sky-high essential fatty acids (+25% that of traditional Shea Butter), natural vitamin crystals that dissolve on skin, and impact sourcing techniques to ensure that LXMI producers are always paid living wages for their efforts.
Name
LXMI is named after the founder's favorite Hindu goddess, whose four hands are thought to represent prosperity, liberation, morality, and love – two giving hands and two receiving hands.
The brand seal represents this concept of giving and receiving. In other words, giving back isn’t an afterthought; it is at the core of LXMI's DNA. In fact, it’s the reason for being.
THE PRODUCERS
Our primary ingredient harvests enable our producers to earn at least 3x local wages.
We've built our supply chain carefully via non-profit collectives. We believe that fair-wage, dignified work elevates our end product, creating a higher level of luxury for discerning consumers.
In fact, we promise that for each of our primary ingredient harvests, our producers earn at least 3x the local average wage. These living wages will help chip away at some of the world’s most serious problems, from childhood malnutrition to human trafficking. Let's transform our skin, our planet and people for the better.
ETHOS
LXMI unites undiscovered, effective natural ingredients with transparent, responsible production and sourcing practices. Above all, we exist to engage women to take part in the world in a way that creates lasting beauty.
Our core beliefs:
• The way we treat our skin – and people – matters.
• Work is at the core of human dignity.
• Giving work is the ultimate solution to global poverty.
What you put on your skin should be potent enough to improve the appearance of your skin, but natural and even safe enough to eat.
RARE
We scour the world to find powerful, natural, organic ingredients and process them in their raw forms to amplify their latent living properties.
DEEP
At LXMI, beauty is more than skin deep. Our products represent beauty in action, for all involved, every step of the way.
FOUNDER
Leila Janah was the Founder and CEO of Samasource and an award-winning social entrepreneur. LXMI was her last venture under the Sama umbrella, with the same mission: to Give Work. Leila was a self-taught skincare aficionado, which was how she spotted the potential of Nilotica while in Uganda.
Prior to Samasource, Leila was a Visiting Scholar with the Stanford Program on Global Justice and Australian National University’s Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. She was a founding Director of Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor, and a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.). She also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let’s Go in Mozambique, Brazil, and Borneo.
Leila was a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Director of CARE USA, a 2012 TechFellow, recipient of the inaugural Club de Madrid Young Leadership Award, and the youngest person to win a Heinz Award in 2014. She was one of the inaugural members of Sephora Accelerate, a cohort dedicated to building a community of innovative female founders in beauty. She was the first of the Accelerate founders to launch products in Sephora stores. She received a BA from Harvard and lived in San Francisco.
Leila very sadly passed away in 2020 from Epithelioid Sarcoma cancer at the age of 37.
