OUR STORY
Made in New York. Made for women.
ROSA COLLECTIVE started in a New York apartment kitchen in 2020, born out of frustration with a beauty industry that kept asking women to choose between performance and purity. We stopped choosing.
The whole story.
ROSA was founded by friends Maya Torres and Jess Kim in 2020. Maya came from a background in cosmetic chemistry. Jess had spent eight years in fashion and beauty editorial. Together they had a specific complaint: the clean beauty products they wanted to use didn't perform, and the products that performed weren't clean. They decided to fix it.
The first product was the Velvet Lip Colour — a full-coverage matte lipstick in four shades, made in a licensed New York cosmetics lab with a formula Maya developed herself. They sold 200 units in the first 48 hours through Instagram alone.
ROSA has grown steadily since — always slowly enough to keep quality control in-house, always quickly enough to fund the next development. Today the range includes 8 products across lips, eyes, and face, all made in small batches in New York, all vegan and cruelty-free.
We have been offered outside investment three times. We have declined every time. ROSA remains founder-owned, independently operated, and deeply committed to making things the right way rather than the fast way.
THE VISIONARIES
Behind the formula.
Maya Torres
Co-Founder & Head of Formulation
BSc Cosmetic Chemistry, NYU. Eleven years in cosmetic formulation before co-founding ROSA. Responsible for every formula in the range. Maya designs products with biocompatible, active plant botanicals and clean humectants that protect the skin's barrier.
Jess Kim
Co-Founder & Creative Director
Eight years in fashion and beauty editorial. Leads brand, creative direction, and product development at ROSA. Jess believes that clean makeup should offer the same tactile luxury, depth of shade, and beautiful visual identity as high-fashion cosmetics.
OUR CRAFTSMANSHIP PILLARS
Cosmetics without compromise.
We operate under three primary standards that separate our batch formulations from generic, mass-produced makeup.
Barrier-Supportive Lipids
We blend luxury beauty with advanced skin health. Every single batch is enriched with premium humectants, unrefined fair-trade shea butter, and pure organic rosehip oil. Our formulas actively reinforce the moisture barrier instead of drying it out.
Heavy-Presence Saturation
No sheer pastel chalks. By using responsibly mined, certified conflict-free ethical mica and high-purity natural earth minerals, we achieve professional-grade paint saturation in a silky, micro-milled compound that delivers full coverage in a single stroke.
Zero Compromise Clean
Proudly 100% certified vegan and cruelty-free. We formulate our products under strict European health metrics, completely banning over 1,600 toxic binders, silicones, microplastics, and parabens to ensure our products are entirely risk-free.