The Nigerian Make-up business history is never completed without Tara Fela-Durotoye. She pioneered the bridal make-up business in 1998 when few young people dared start-ups. In 2000, she facilitated the first-ever series of bridal seminars, drawing for the first time in Nigeria celebrated professionals in the bridal industry to speak to brides.
Tara Fela-Durotoye is the managing director and Creative Director of House of Tara International, a Nigerian makeup company. The organisation has grown into a franchise enterprise with three main lines of business: the Make-up Studio, the Makeup School and the Tara product line comprising beauty products and professional make-up kits.
Listening to Tara recently on her history of courage, she recalls how she took in her first student for free. For her, having a student at that point was experimental because she had no proper structure training structure. She developed a curriculum while training the student and today House of Tara has produced a large number of make-up artists (1000 via the make-up school); some are now active players in Nigerian beauty industry.
A woman given to purposeful living, her desire for H.O. T is to be the first choice of cosmetics for every black woman, while enriching lives of young women by offering them quality products to enhance their self esteem while making money by the side as a beauty rep. She is given to raising young entrepreneurs who are financially independent and confident.
She has also succeeded in empowering young ladies -over 800 of them – in the tertiary institutions with the Tara Orekelewa beauty representatives’ initiative that makes them financially independent, improves their self esteem while building their marketing and entrepreneurial skills.
House of Tara’s first shop rent was paid in bits as installments because of poor funding. Today, she has franchises spread across Nigeria (branches in Lagos, Ibadan, Port-Harcourt and Abuja) and with emerging footprint on the West African coastal countries of Cotonou, Ghana and Senegal.
Fela-Durotoye is a trained and certified make-up artist of Charles Fox, Convent Garden, London. Married to Fela Durotoye, the highly sought- after motivational speaker, consultant extraordinaire, author and agent of transformation, she is the mother of 3 boys.
Tara is loved and celebrated by us for following after her passion wholeheartedly, for being a path finder and a beacon light.