Emma Lewisham didn’t set out to follow the beauty industry. From the moment she founded her eponymous brand in 2019, the goal was to rethink it entirely – starting with a question most of the industry wasn’t asking: what if skin care worked the way skin actually does?
While the market chased hero ingredients one molecule at a time, Emma Lewisham built formulations around biology itself. She treated skin not as a surface to treat, but as a complex, interconnected system. Products carrying up to twenty-five evidence-based active ingredients at proven concentrations, engineered to work across skin’s multiple pathways simultaneously. Not one ingredient doing one job, but a system designed for a system. It was a slower, more rigorous way to build a beauty brand, and for years it set Emma Lewisham apart on formulation alone.
Then came the sustainability credentials that set it apart again: in 2021, Emma Lewisham became the first skin care company in the world to achieve climate-positive certification, and today holds the highest B Corp score of any luxury skin care company on the planet. That same year, the brand received a rare endorsement from Dr. Jane Goodall – a first for any beauty company – who said she hoped “the beauty industry can follow Emma Lewisham’s lead,” calling it a pioneer paving the way for the future.
An Endorsement Even Emma Lewisham Didn’t See Coming
This month brings a milestone that even a brand accustomed to firsts couldn’t have anticipated. Dr. Peter Agre – the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry whose discovery of aquaporins reshaped modern biology – has publicly recognised Emma Lewisham. In more than two decades since receiving his Nobel Prize, across a career that includes a professorship at Johns Hopkins and the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Agre has never before put his name behind a beauty brand.
That he chose Emma Lewisham speaks less to marketing and more to a genuine meeting of ideas. His discovery of aquaporins – the proteins that govern how water moves across the membranes of our cells, often called the “plumbing system of cells” – revealed that the body manages hydration not through a single mechanism, but through an intricate, interconnected system. It’s a principle that, remarkably, mirrors the exact thinking Emma Lewisham had already built her formulations around: that skin, like the body itself, doesn’t run on isolated fixes, but on networks working in concert.
“I recognise Emma Lewisham’s genuine commitment to scientific thinking and dedication to sustainable practices,” Dr. Agre shares. “What’s most appealing about Emma Lewisham is their way of thinking, curiosity, and genuine authenticity in their work. I’ve witnessed first-hand her commitment to solving problems while running a business that operates with real ethics and responsibility. Their work is anchored in science, using it as a force for good.”
A Founder’s Instinct, Validated
For Emma, this recognition validates the instinct that has guided her since day one. “Curiosity has always been a driving force in my life – it’s what led me to question the status quo and pursue solutions where others saw limitations,” she reflects. “To be recognised by Dr. Peter Agre – a scientist whose groundbreaking work reshaped how we understand the natural world – is incredibly meaningful. He embodies the kind of purpose-driven innovation we aspire to, and his acknowledgement reinforces our mission to lead with both scientific excellence and ethical responsibility.”
Taken together with Dr. Goodall’s endorsement in 2021, it means Emma Lewisham now holds acknowledgment from two of the most respected figures in science and conservation – the ethics recognised by one, the science now recognised by the other. Few founders, in any industry, can claim that kind of alignment. Fewer still have arrived at it by holding to a single idea, unchanged, since the beginning.
The story isn’t finished. Emma Lewisham has confirmed a forthcoming product innovation directly informed by Dr. Agre’s pioneering aquaporin research – a formulation still under wraps, but one that promises to bring his Nobel-winning science literally into the jar. It’s a fitting next step for a founder who built a brand on the belief that beauty could meet the same standards as science, then waited for science to catch up.
