She's known for forging a path in the beauty industry, turning her make-up blog into a billion-dollar brand.
However, Huda Kattan has revealed that fame and success is not all it is always cracked up to be.
The American-Iraqi beauty mogul, 36, has been relatively absent from social media in the past few months, and this week took to Instagram to explain her silence.
The Huda Beauty founder, who lives in Dubai, revealed she needed some time to "centre" herself, after a fast-paced decade.
"I feel like I owe everyone a little bit of an explanation. I know a lot of people have been asking where I am and what I’ve been up to," Kattan said in a candid eight-minute video shared with the 2.1 million followers on her personal Instagram account on Wednesday, September 9.
The star, who shares daughter Nour, 9, with her husband Christopher Goncalo, has sporadically posted on social media since June.
"I have been a little bit MIA, I’ve needed a little bit of a break. Things have moved so fast for myself, my family, my team since starting my blog in 2010," she continued. "Honestly, when I got into the beauty space, I got into it because I loved beauty so much. I felt really ugly as a kid, I didn’t feel attractive. I felt like there were people that had beauty and they felt strong … and I thought if I had it, maybe I’d feel really strong and beautiful and confident."
Kattan, who launched her namesake beauty brand in 2013, admitted that make-up was a "tool that made me feel better", but shared that she has realised she doesn't need it.
"Putting a little make-up on, shaving my moustache, doing my brows, doing my hair, those things made me feel really powerful," she said. "But I don’t need those, those feelings are always within me, but at the time I thought it was the products that made me feel that way."
The star, who also started her own Facebook Watch series in 2018, told fans she never expected to set up a business when she first launched her blog.
'I wasn’t put on this Earth just to create a beauty brand'
"I’ve had to do so many things I didn’t think I would do and become a higher version of myself and continuously push myself over and over and over again, which was so stressful," she said.
"I don’t know if I ever took a moment to centre myself enough. I always felt pressure from the outside to be strong for everyone – I know now I needed to connect with myself."
Kattan added that she had used her time away from social media to "go back to the most basic element of who I am".
"It was liberating, empowering and a beautiful moment and I feel very grateful to have been able to do that," she added.
"I wasn’t put on this Earth just to create a beauty brand. I hope that I’m here to inspire and to share my story. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is actually stronger than anything else, and I’m ready for that."
Kattan added that she would be back to posting social media, promising fans could expect "big things" in the near future.
