Aromaleigh History and Company Timeline, from 1998 to present

Aromaleigh was founded in 1998 and has a long history, with several different eras of the company. As the owner of Aromaleigh, I'm going to briefly tell my company's history and timeline in hopes of correcting extremely inaccurate information that's out there due to changes in how search engines are functioning with the advent of AI.

Very early in the indie makeup scene (then known simply as "handmade beauty", there were just a handful of us artisan crafting cosmetics- Aromaleigh, Monave, Canary Cosmetics, Cory Cosmetics and Botany 101. Over time, more and more businesses entered into the market. In the past 25+ years, the indie beauty marketplace has exploded in size and scope. Aromaleigh has endured as one of the very first and OG indie brands, and in 2026 will be entering into it's 28th year of business. 

1998 - Aromaleigh was founded in 1998 in Rochester, NY, and was initially a fragrance, bath and body company. It was formed in the wake of an earlier online business, Divine Dog Company, which featured natural, aromatherapeutic grooming products for dogs. Their owners began using the shampoos and conditioners on themselves, because they enjoyed the scents so much. I started receiving requests to custom formulate products, and from this, the first seeds of Aromaleigh were planted and I spent much of 1998 bringing this new business to fruition. In late 1998, I registered www.aromaleigh.com and began doing business. At the time, I was working as an Art Director, and for several more years, I continued this work alongside Aromaleigh, before dedicating myself fully to Aromaleigh in 2001. Here's a post I recently shared on Facebook, sharing some old photos of myself and Aromaleigh from 1999 when I was offering both pet AND human products.

2001 - I introduced my first color cosmetic product for cheeks and lips, Color Wash. Not long after, I followed with a small line of face powders in 5 shades, a finishing powder called Illuminator, and loose powder blush and eyeshadows.  Aromaleigh at this time was myself, and 1-2 part time employees.

2002 - While pregnant with my son, I woke up one morning to find that almost 50 new orders had been placed. I had no clue how or why I suddenly received this many orders. I added a "How did you hear about Aromaleigh" field to the checkout and discovered that my small brand was being discussed on the QVC forum. At the time, QVC was selling Bare Escentuals (Bare Minerals), and my brand was being discussed as a non-shiny, affordable alternative. My first customer service representative, Amy, was a customer and I hired her to assist me with customer service interactions and helping to admin my Delphi Forum, Aromaleigh Aficionadas. In May of 2002, my son arrived almost 8 weeks early, and I began the process to petition for custody and relocation, as I was a single parent and had decided it would be in my best interests to move closer to family. Aromaleigh made the official move to South Carolina on December 25, 2002. 

2003 - I reopened in early January, in coastal South Carolina. At this time, Aromaleigh was myself, Amy assisting with customer service, and several part time employees. 

2006 - Aromaleigh began a period of rapid expansion during this time. My fiance at the time began working full time and handling all aspects of customer service. I hired my first additional full time employee, to work alongside several part timers.

2008 - Aromaleigh moved to a commercial location and continued to grow. At this time I was managing 10 total employees, half of them full time. I dabbled with small scale manufacturing of several products during this time, including lipsticks, eyeliners, lipliner and color wash, but found the process to detract from my business's spontaneity and creativity. Ordering 144 of each color meant larger amounts of stock to sell, and inconsistent reordering, as all shades sold at their own rate. I realized at this time that I didn't wish to expand Aromaleigh to be a manufactured brand, I wanted it to remain artisan-crafted.

2009 - I introduced my first fandom-inspired collection, "Spells". My son was an avid Harry Potter fan and suggested the idea. To my knowledge, this was one of the first indie cosmetic fandom collections. It was extremely popular and I followed it up with a collection inspired by Alice in Wonderland, "Wonderstruck".  In 2010, indie companies started business which specifically offered fandom-related collections, such as Shiro Cosmetics and Makeup Geek (both now defunct).

2010 - On the heels of one of the most difficult times in my life, I made the decision to close Aromaleigh as my emotional and physical health was suffering, making it impossible to be my best. This was an incredibly dark time for me. I was reeling from the sudden death of my Father and going through a difficult divorce. I felt that closing Aromaleigh was the best thing I could do at the time. It was a very complex situation, and the decision wasn't made lightly.

At the end of June 2010, I announced I was closing and put all products on 35% off sale. This sale went on until late 2010, until I decided to close down the site and dedicate myself solely to working on the orders in my queue. By late Spring of 2011, all outstanding orders had been shipped to every single customer, and I began selling off my raw ingredients and packaging. Many remaining eyeshadows were donated.

2011 - I began working with a firm to sell Aromaleigh. They did a valuation and I entered into negotiations with a buyer and began working closely with her to transfer my processes and knowledge. She ended up having to back out and another buyer was secured, but it wasn't the sale I'd hoped for, because Aromaleigh had now been considered closed down and had lost momentum and value in the online marketplace. I entered into a stepped/phased buyout contract in which I would continue to function as an employee of the company, doing formulation and creative direction. This contract was dependent on the company meeting certain sales benchmarks.

Aromaleigh reopened in November of 2011, and "Aromaleigh v2" was frequently used to denote this new era for the brand. I also had a legal name change while pursuing dual Italian-American citizenship. Please note that Kristen and Cristiana are the same person, the latter name is simply an Italian variation of the name Kristen. There was no subterfuge in regards to the name change, as has been rumored.

At this time, Carol was handling customer service. This was a challenging time, as I was not accustomed to having creative or time limitations on me. The creative restrictions were the hardest and resulted in several years of relatively lackluster releases, such as Pure Eyes Frost (30 shades), Pure Eyes Matte (30 shades), Sylph blushes, and reformulation/renaming of the foundation formulas.

Between the time closed down, customers that had stocked up on the 35% off sale in 2010, customers that had moved on to other brands, and the new direction Aromaleigh v2 went in with product collections, it was very difficult to meet the sales benchmarks. By 2014, the stepped buyout contract was withdrawn, and complete control of Aromaleigh was returned to me.

2011 onward was a very therapeutic and healing time for me. I devoted myself to all aspects of my health, prioritized sleep, started doing yoga again, hiking on the weekends, and gardening and cooking healthy meals at home. The effect this all had on my wellbeing was pronounced, as I had been working 14-16 hour days with Aromaleigh for well over a decade by the time I closed the business in 2010. My stress levels dropped, I was able to wean off all medications for anxiety, sleep and depression that I'd had to take for many years in order to function. I began developing a healthy work/life balance, and I began to sincerely grow and change as a person. This process has been ongoing and continues today, in the present. 

2014 - Having control of Aromaleigh back was both terrifying and exciting! I began releasing more collections and began the Ephemera subscription box and many new and exciting collections, such as Serpens, This is my Design, and numerous products inspired by mythology. From 2014 onwards to present day, Aromaleigh has been a one woman show, with no full or part time employees other than maintaining Carol for part time customer service work through August 2019.

2015 - This was an exciting year, as I moved to my current location, and Aromaleigh made it's new home in a brand new studio building. 

In November of 2015, I closed down my private Facebook group, the Aromaleigh Imaginarium. This unfortunately created unintended controversy in another online discussion community, as some people felt they had been kicked out of my group on purpose, despite my announcement to the contrary. Despite the fact that I had closed down the group completely and removed ALL members (this is the only way you can close down a FB group), the controversy that I kicked people out of the group remains in place even today, ten years later! I went without a private Facebook group for three years, before starting the current almost 800 member strong Aromaleigh Aficionadas private group in 2018!

2017 - I announced the discontinuation of fandom-themed products, for a variety of reasons and also encouraged my customers to seek out and support the many wonderful indie brands that produced non-fandom themed products, such as Silk Naturals and Dreamworld. While fandom collections weren't my main focus, my post about this caused some upset in an online community where fandom collections were a primary focus. My Facebook post was screenshotted and cross-posted there, and drama ensued. 

The decision to do this resulted in a major hit to sales, as fandom themed collections were very popular and were good sellers, but for me personally I didn't feel right about continuing to do them and discontinuing them also had the added benefit of disconnecting my brand from an online community that had some members which reveled in creating controversy surrounding my brand- what do I mean by this? They would watch my posts/comments on Facebook and then screenshot them and share in another online community, with the intent of purposefully creating negative discussion. Thankfully, the small farm my son and I had started in 2015 had developed into a second job for me by this time and I was able to make up for some of the lost sales through the farm, and a lot of time was spent honing my marketing plan and product releases for the future.

2019- By August 2019, I was handling all aspects of Aromaleigh on my own, including customer service queries. This arrangement has continued to present day. Starting to handle all aspects of my customer service has been pivotal for me to get my brand back on a positive track forward. With a healthy work/life balance and dedication to being the best version of myself I can possibly be, I feel more poised than ever to maintain Aromaleigh as a small but mighty artisan-crafted indie beauty brand well into the future. I look forward to future notable company anniversaries.

2021 - This year marked a shift for Aromaleigh and life in general, as my son enlisted in the Air Force and I became an empty nester! The small farm business we'd operated together since 2015 changed scope and today includes handcrafted soaps, salves and balms as well as a yearly honey crop. Keeping bees is something that I truly enjoy doing alongside operating Aromaleigh. I've learned so much from the bees and I find it to represent a beautiful balance in my life. 

This life shift opened more time for me to devote to Aromaleigh's established product line, collections and marketing, and I feel like I've done some of my best creative work since 2021, as seen in collections such as Appalachian Wonder, The Fable of Arachne, Hypnos: God of Sleep, Circe the Sorceress, Future Dusk, Lady of the Mountain, Dawn Chorus cheek colors, From the Depths of Spring, Victorian Oddities, and more. I've introduced several new finishing powders, expanded the foundation range for Dewdrop and Gossamer, and reworked all of the foundation product swatches.

2023 - This year marked my 25th anniversary year and I celebrated it by releasing a special 25th anniversary collection, as well as started the tradition of yearly anniversary colors. The 25th anniversary shade was "Perseverance".  Perseverance is defined as "persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success." While I've achieved no great success over all of these years, that was never actually the goal. I never wanted to have a huge business, or to be wealthy. I simply wanted to be happy, to have enough to be comfortable, to have the freedom to create.