The Fenty Effect
How Fenty Beauty's 40-shade launch forced the entire beauty industry to expand shade ranges, and proved inclusion was a revenue opportunity, not charity.
Before September 2017, most prestige foundation lines topped out at around 20 shades. The darkest options were often afterthoughts: limited availability, poor formulation, minimal representation in marketing. Women with deeper skin tones adapted: mixing foundations, adjusting with concealer, or accepting that the industry wasn’t built for them.
Then Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades and generated $100 million in its first 40 days. The beauty industry called this “The Fenty Effect.” Women of color called it overdue.
Before Fenty
The prestige beauty market in 2017 looked like this:
| Brand | Foundation shades available (2017) |
|---|---|
| MAC | ~33 (widest mainstream range at the time) |
| Maybelline Fit Me | 16 |
| CoverGirl | ~12 |
| L’Oréal True Match | ~33 |
| Dior | ~20 |
| NARS | ~20 |
| Estée Lauder Double Wear | ~30 |
Most brands clustered their shades in the light-to-medium range. The deeper end of the spectrum, anything beyond medium-dark, typically had 3-5 options that didn’t account for undertone variation. A dark-skinned woman shopping at Sephora had a fraction of the options available to a light-skinned woman.
This wasn’t an oversight. It was a business decision. The prevailing industry logic was that deeper shades sold less, cost more to formulate, and weren’t worth the shelf space. Brands built shade ranges around who they considered their core customer, and that customer was almost always white.
What Fenty Did Differently
Fenty launched with 40 shades on September 8, 2017. But the shade count alone wasn’t the revolution. Three things mattered more:
The darkest shades were front and center. In Sephora displays, Fenty arranged shades so the deepest tones were at eye level, prominently displayed, not tucked at the end of a rack. In advertising, models with the deepest skin tones were featured first, not added for diversity. The darkest shades weren’t an afterthought. They were the point.
Every shade had proper undertone variation. Fenty didn’t offer 40 shades by spacing them evenly from light to dark. They offered multiple undertone options (warm, neutral, cool) at every depth. A woman who was “deep” had options that reflected her actual skin, not a single brown swatch.
The marketing was explicit. Rihanna didn’t market Fenty as “also for dark skin.” She marketed it as “beauty for all” and made the darkest shades the hero products. The first viral moments were women trying the deepest shades and finding their match for the first time.
The Industry Response
Within 18 months of Fenty’s launch, virtually every major beauty brand expanded its shade range:
| Brand | Before Fenty (2017) | After Fenty (2018-2019) |
|---|---|---|
| Maybelline Fit Me | 16 shades | 40 shades |
| CoverGirl TruBlend | ~12 shades | 40 shades |
| Dior Backstage | ~20 shades | 40 shades |
| L’Oréal True Match | ~33 shades | 45 shades |
| Revlon ColorStay | ~20 shades | 40+ shades |
| Too Faced Born This Way | ~20 shades | 35 shades |
The number 40 kept appearing. It became a benchmark. Brands that launched with fewer shades were publicly criticized. “How many shades does it come in?” became a standard question in beauty media that barely existed before 2017.
The Business Case
The Fenty Effect proved something the industry had either ignored or denied: underserved markets are underserved because companies chose not to serve them, not because demand doesn’t exist.
Fenty Beauty generated $570 million in its first full year, more than any other celebrity beauty brand launch in history. The deeper shades didn’t underperform. In multiple markets, they sold out first.
A 2019 study found that “inclusive” beauty brands (those offering 40+ shades) grew revenue 24% faster than brands with limited shade ranges. The market for multicultural beauty products in the US alone was valued at $8.1 billion in 2017 and has grown since.
The argument that deeper shades aren’t profitable was never true. It was a circular logic: brands didn’t market to women of color, women of color didn’t see themselves represented, sales of darker shades were low, and brands used those low sales to justify continued underinvestment. Fenty broke the cycle by investing in the full range from day one and marketing it accordingly.
Beyond Foundation
The Fenty Effect expanded past shade ranges. It shifted the broader conversation about who beauty brands are designed for:
Hiring. More brands began featuring models of diverse skin tones in campaigns, not as the one “diversity” model, but throughout. Casting calls that once specified “light skin preferred” became harder to justify publicly.
Product development. Brands started testing formulations on a wider range of skin tones during development, not after launch. This meant products that actually worked on darker skin, not just existed in darker bottles.
Other categories. The conversation spread beyond beauty. Fashion brands were pressed on size ranges. Haircare brands were challenged on whether they served textured hair as well as straight. The principle, that excluding people from your market is leaving money on the table, applied everywhere.
What It Didn’t Fix
The Fenty Effect changed product ranges. It didn’t change the underlying economics.
Women of color still have fewer options in prestige beauty. A 40-shade foundation line doesn’t help if the concealer, powder, bronzer, and blush lines from the same brand still only serve light skin. Shade expansion was the most visible change, but it was also the easiest, because extending an existing product line is cheaper than rethinking an entire brand.
The deeper problem, who runs beauty companies, who makes formulation decisions, who allocates marketing budgets, moved more slowly. As of 2024, fewer than 5% of beauty brand founders who have received institutional investment are Black women.
Fenty proved the market exists. It didn’t equalize who gets to serve that market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who coined the term “The Fenty Effect”?
Beauty media began using the term in late 2017 and early 2018, primarily in outlets like Allure, Vogue, and Business of Fashion. There’s no single originator. It emerged as shorthand for the industry-wide shade range expansion that followed Fenty’s launch.
Did the expanded shade ranges actually sell?
Yes. Fenty’s deeper shades frequently sold out at launch. Maybelline reported that its expanded Fit Me line saw increased revenue across all shades, not just the new additions. The expanded range brought new customers to the brand who then bought multiple products.
Are brands still expanding shade ranges?
The initial wave of expansion (2017-2019) has mostly stabilized. Most new prestige foundation launches now include 30-50 shades as standard. The conversation has shifted from “how many shades” to “do the shades actually match diverse undertones” and “are the deeper formulations the same quality as the lighter ones.”
Sources: Business of Fashion, NPD Group beauty market data, Allure, Vogue Business, Nielsen multicultural beauty report