Catherine Isaiah didn’t wait for perfect timing. She took the moment she had and turned 60 dollars into a brand, and built a business that now serves women across three countries and reaches thousands more online. For her, this is more than a hustle. It’s heritage. Originally from South Sudan and now based in Uganda, Catherine is the founder of Black Girl Magic Naturals, an organic hair and skincare brand born from her own frustrations with maintaining her natural hair. She was tired of chemicals and high costs, so she started mixing her own products at home. When her friends began asking for the secret behind her hair’s strength and growth, she realized: this is bigger than me.
Her first product was a homemade moisturizer. It wasn’t fancy, but it worked, and that’s what mattered. One product turned into a line. One friend turned into hundreds of customers. Today, she ships globally and handles over 1,000 customer requests a month, all from her social media pages.
We’re not just selling a product, We’re promoting our culture.
Catherine Isaiah
Still, she calls it a hustle. Because behind the scenes is the daily grind of school, business, and building a dream with limited resources. As a sole proprietor, she’s the formulator, the marketer, the packer, and the planner. Balancing all that is no small feat. But the reward? It’s in the messages. “This is the product I’ve been searching for.” “You helped me love my hair again.”
When she handed out her products to every attendee at the recent Africa Forum for Displacement in Nairobi, something clicked. “It felt like my hard work was being validated,” she says. That moment was a turning point. A reminder that she wasn’t just mixing oils but she was building a movement.
Her packaging, once an afterthought, is now world-class—polished, export-ready, and designed to speak for itself. “At first I thought it was only the inside that mattered,” she admits. “But now I know people also buy with their eyes.”
Catherine’s dreams are bold as she is dreaming of getting to $10 million in annual revenue. But her mission is even bigger: making sure every Black woman, wherever she is, can wear her crown confidently. She wants young girls to grow up never feeling the need to damage their hair to fit in.
The Amahoro Coalition came at just the right time. “I was like a balloon that was about to pop. Amahoro was the pin.” With funding, mentorship, and belief, Catherine is now thinking beyond survival. She’s hiring. Scaling. Dreaming louder.
“Ideas will stay in your head unless you do something. I started with 60 dollars . Now I make over 5 million Ugandan shillings a month.”BGM Naturals is still growing, with a website in the works. For now, she sells directly through her social media, where she shows up every day, teaching women to love their hair, their culture, and themselves. With over half a million followers and more than 20 million interactions on her social media accounts and counting. Catherine is on a mission to inspire and empower African women through Black Girl Magic Naturals and you don’t want to miss it. Follow her on social media accounts to shop BGM’s organic hair and skincare products, see the journey, partner and be part of the movement .
