Few celebrity beauty brands have built a visual and product identity as quickly, or as clearly, as rhode.
Founded by Hailey Rhode Bieber, rhode launched in June 2022 with a deliberately edited approach to skincare. Instead of arriving with an extensive collection, the idea was closer to building a wardrobe of essentials: a small number of products designed to work together, support the skin barrier, and create the hydrated, luminous finish that would become inseparable from the brand (e.l.f. Beauty).
That finish had a name, too: glazed skin.
What could easily have remained another celebrity beauty catchphrase became something much bigger. Rhode turned the look into a recognizable aesthetic, then built products, packaging, campaigns, and eventually makeup around it.
By 2025, just three years after launch, rhode had generated $212 million in net sales over the previous 12 months. That same year, e.l.f. Beauty agreed to acquire the company in a deal valued at up to $1 billion (e.l.f. Beauty).
The speed is remarkable.
The more interesting question is how rhode got there.
The story behind rhode
The idea began before the launch, and before rhode became one of beauty’s most visible brands.
Bieber had spent years modeling and working around makeup artists, facialists, dermatologists, and other beauty professionals. Her interest increasingly centered on skincare and on a relatively simple question: which products actually deserve a permanent place in a routine?
The concept that emerged was what Bieber has described as wanting “one of everything really good”. Rather than building a complicated regimen, rhode would focus on a tightly edited collection of essentials that could multitask and work together.
The company itself began taking shape in 2020.
Bieber approached Michael D. Ratner and Lauren Ratner with the idea. Michael helped guide the company from its formation and became co-executive chairman, while Lauren helped architect the brand and became its president and chief brand officer (e.l.f. Beauty).
Rhode finally launched in June 2022.
And the restraint of that initial launch mattered.
Instead of trying to prove that rhode could make everything, it first tried to establish what a rhode product was supposed to feel like.
More than Hailey Bieber’s skincare line
Celebrity is an extraordinary launch advantage. It can generate attention before a single independent customer has tried the product.
But attention and longevity are different things.
Rhode’s more interesting achievement has been turning Bieber’s personal beauty aesthetic into a coherent product language.
Hydrated skin. A glossy finish. Minimal-looking makeup. Neutral packaging. Highly tactile textures. Products designed to sit somewhere between skincare routine and beauty ritual.
The aesthetic is unmistakably connected to Bieber, but the brand increasingly works as a recognizable visual identity even when she isn’t in the frame.
That’s difficult to manufacture.
And it’s one reason rhode deserves to be evaluated as more than simply another celebrity brand.
The skin barrier at the center
Rhode’s skincare philosophy is heavily centered on hydration and barrier support.
The current core routine moves through a sequence the brand describes as cleanse, prep, glaze, comfort and nourish. Products use ingredients including ceramides, peptides, glycerin, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and emollients, depending on the formula (rhode).
The approach is intentionally uncomplicated.
Rather than building the line around aggressive actives or an elaborate corrective routine, rhode’s core skincare is largely about keeping skin hydrated, comfortable and visibly healthy-looking.
That doesn’t make every formula universally suitable, and “barrier-supporting” has become one of beauty’s most heavily used marketing ideas.
As always, the individual formula matters more than the philosophy printed around it.
The products that defined rhode
Several products have been particularly important in establishing what rhode is.
Peptide Glazing Fluid
Perhaps the clearest expression of the original rhode aesthetic.
The lightweight gel serum is designed to hydrate and illuminate the skin, using ingredients including glycerin, niacinamide, a peptide and marula oil. Its intended result is right there in the language of the brand: a dewy, glazed finish (rhode).
More importantly, the product helped turn “glazing” from a description of Bieber’s skin into part of rhode’s own vocabulary.
Peptide Lip Treatment
If Peptide Glazing Fluid helped establish rhode’s skincare identity, Peptide Lip Treatment helped make the brand culturally ubiquitous.
The glossy treatment blurred an increasingly important boundary in beauty: is this skincare, makeup, or both?
Rhode continued developing that idea through tinted versions and ultimately a broader color offering. What began as a skin-focused company was gradually becoming a beauty brand whose makeup still spoke the language of skincare.
Glazing Milk
Glazing Milk extended the glazed-skin concept into the prep stage of the routine.
The ceramide facial essence is positioned between cleansing and serum, with a formula centered around a ceramide trio, glycerin, minerals and vitamin E. Rhode describes it as an all-day hydration step that also prepares the skin for skincare and makeup (rhode).
It’s also a good example of how rhode has expanded without completely abandoning the simplicity of its original proposition: each new product is expected to occupy a clearly defined place in the routine.
Barrier Restore Cream
Barrier Restore Cream, or BRC, is the brand’s daily moisturizer.
Its formula includes shea butter, niacinamide, squalane, peptides, hyaluronic acid and bisabolol, with the product positioned around hydration, comfort and barrier support (rhode).
It isn’t the glamorous part of the rhode story, and that’s precisely why it’s important.
A brand built around glazed skin still needs the basic moisturizer underneath the glaze.
When skincare became makeup
Rhode’s expansion beyond traditional skincare was a natural extension of its original aesthetic.
The lips came first. Then color became increasingly central to the brand.
Rather than creating a conventional makeup line detached from the skincare range, rhode has continued positioning its color products around skin, texture and ease. By 2026, the company itself describes rhode as a collection of skincare and hybrid makeup essentials (e.l.f. Beauty).
That distinction matters.
The most convincing brand extensions tend to feel as though the company had permission to make them before they existed.
For rhode, moving from glazed skin to glossy lips and skin-focused color makes intuitive sense.
The business story: from startup to a $1 billion deal
Rhode’s growth became impossible to view simply as celebrity-brand momentum.
In the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, the company generated $212 million in net sales.
Then came the deal that changed the scale of the company.
In May 2025, e.l.f. Beauty announced an agreement to acquire rhode. The structure included $800 million payable at closing, $600 million in cash and $200 million in e.l.f. Beauty stock, plus a potential $200 million earnout tied to future growth (e.l.f. Beauty).
The acquisition was completed on August 5, 2025 (e.l.f. Beauty).
Importantly, Bieber didn’t simply disappear after the sale. The founding leadership remained involved, with Bieber continuing in creative and innovation roles and Michael and Lauren Ratner remaining part of the leadership structure.
For a company launched only three years earlier, a potential $1 billion valuation was a striking outcome.
But the next move was arguably just as important.
From direct-to-consumer to Sephora
For its first years, rhode was primarily a direct-to-consumer business.
That changed in September 2025, when rhode launched at Sephora online and across stores in the U.S. and Canada, its first major retail expansion. E.l.f. Beauty described it as the largest brand launch in Sephora’s history in North America (e.l.f. Beauty).
The brand subsequently expanded through Sephora in the U.K., and in 2026 announced a broader European rollout (e.l.f. Beauty).
That’s an important chapter in the rhode story.
A brand built extraordinarily well for Instagram, TikTok and direct online selling now has to work on a physical beauty shelf, where the customer can compare its textures, prices and formulas directly with dozens of established competitors.
That’s where brand heat meets product reality.
Why rhode stands out
Rhode’s success isn’t explained by a single breakthrough ingredient.
Its differentiation comes from how tightly the pieces fit together.
The product edit is relatively disciplined. The packaging is immediately recognizable. The language is consistent. Product textures reinforce the visual identity. New categories tend to extend an existing idea rather than introduce an entirely new personality.
And Bieber herself isn’t merely attached to the advertising. Her own beauty aesthetic effectively became the starting point for the brand’s visual vocabulary.
That’s a powerful advantage.
But it also creates a useful test for rhode as the company grows: can the products remain desirable when the trend moves on?
“Glazed” skin may have helped build the brand. A lasting beauty company eventually has to offer more than the aesthetic that made it famous.
Celebrity brand, serious beauty company
There’s a temptation to evaluate celebrity brands in one of two ways.
Either celebrity involvement is treated as evidence that the product must be superficial, or the founder’s popularity becomes part of the evidence that the product must be good.
Neither is particularly useful.
Hailey Bieber’s reach unquestionably gave rhode an advantage most beauty startups could never buy.
It also doesn’t tell us whether a moisturizer is well formulated, whether a lip product performs better than its competitors, or whether a serum deserves its price.
The extraordinary growth of the company tells us that rhode has built a successful brand.
It doesn’t mean every rhode product automatically earns our recommendation.
Those are two different questions.
And at LOREN STANDARD, we’re much more interested in the second one.
rhode on LOREN STANDARD
Below you’ll find our rhode product coverage, comparisons, reviews and guides.
We’ll look beyond the campaigns and the glazed finish to examine the individual formulas: what they do well, who they’re best suited to, where the brand offers something genuinely distinctive, and where another product may offer better value.
“Because a billion-dollar beauty story is fascinating. The product still has to earn its place in your routine.”
We love products. Not logos.
