Two years ago, body care brand Hanahana Beauty celebrated their five year anniversary with creative artist Mia Lee, launching a limited edition collection of shea butter and affirmation cards. Now, with their yearly commemoration back again, “we wanted to be intentional about how we celebrated our seventh anniversary,” founder Abena Boamah-Acheampong tells ESSENCE, conceiving their latest limited edition collaboration, but this time with fragrance brand Universe of Harth.
“I’ve known Amanda [Harth] for a while,” Boamah-Acheampong says about the founder, even though their new fragrance Elevate was born out of unfamiliarity. “During the winter, [my photographer] was shooting our holiday set,” she says, when she began to talk about interest in branching into a perfume for Hanahana’s seventh anniversary. In response, the photographer pulled out a fragrance for her to smell, “I was like, ‘What brand is this? I need to purchase it, please let me know.’” To her surprise, she was inhaling the Harth Universal Spray. “I was like, ‘Wait, Amanda’s brand?’”
“From there, Amanda came and did a team scent testing just for us to try all her scents that she had at her HQ,” Boamah-Acheampong says. After about 20 different samples, the Hanahana Beauty team voted on a scent that felt like an elevated oud to layer over their signature body butter collection, specifically their amber vanilla scent. Honing in on the sillage of the Elevate fragrance, “it’s supposed to be a scent that you don’t have to go close to smell someone, it’s more so if someone walks past you’re like, ‘okay, what is that smell?’,” she says. “It’s something also that it layers well with your other fragrances too, we call it a finishing touch.”
Although formulated to layer with amber vanilla, “there’s no amber actually in it, and there’s no vanilla [either],” she says. Instead, Hanahana leaned into top notes of santal and palo santo for a soft oud, before passing through a refreshing tonka and agarwood middle. As the fragrance dries down, a bergamot and rose base exudes a light powdery moment. “It’s a bit of black floral, but it goes well with any of our products,” she says, including bamboo coconut, eucalyptus and lemongrass body butter. “Men can wear it, women can wear it, anyone can wear it.”
The exclusive fragrance is not just for the body either. From spraying it on fabrics to using it as your room’s aerosol, the fragrance is multi-use and comes as an incense as well. “To celebrate our anniversary, we have incense that had that matching smell,” she says, which will be featured in PR packages and at their Studio 7 launch event this weekend. However, just like the elevated incense and holiday body butter, the Elevate fragrance is an exclusive which means it is limited to only 300 bottles before selling out. “All of our best sellers started as limited edition products that people asked to come back,” Boamah-Acheampong says. “I love doing limited editions, especially when it’s a collaboration [because] if you really want this and you’re paying attention, you’ll get it.”
Remaining intentional with exclusive product launches before investing in a full range of fragrance, “we are still focused on being a daily use body care brand,” she explains. “I’m more interested in seeing how people react to newness,” which is why Hanahana Beauty will expand further into body care this year, taking their products into the shower with you. From new body cleansers to full-range body butter reformulations, Boamah-Acheampong’s focus is to continue layering and creating products you can use in your body care routines – and it’s just what her customers asked for.
Hanahana Beauty x Universe of Harth’s limited edition anniversary fragrance is available now at hanahanabeauty.com.