Huda Kattan is the latest UAE name to be awarded a Dubai Star. The beauty mogul, who is behind the successful brand Huda Beauty, has long lived in the Emirates. She has found global success in the cosmetics industry, selling everything from lip kits to false eyelashes and Instagram-perfect foundations.
"Congratulations to the influencer-turned-entrepreneur who built a beauty empire, Huda Kattan," the organisers of the Dubai Walk of Fame project wrote on Twitter. "You are a Dubai Star."
Congratulations to the influencer-turned-entrepreneur who built a beauty empire, Huda Kattan. You are a #DubaiStar.@hudabeauty pic.twitter.com/UkO8ODz3vX
— The Dubai Stars (@TheDubaiStars) October 7, 2019
The beauty entrepreneur, who along with her sisters, Mona Kattan and Alya Kattan, is the star of Facebook Watch reality series, Huda Boss. The second series, set in Dubai and Los Angeles, premiered on the social site on August 20, 2019.
Huda Kattan: Instagram's 'richest' star
Kattan, who has an enormous 39.2 million followers, recently topped Instagram's 2019 Rich List, according to scheduling tool Hopper, despite never monetising her posts on the social site.
The founder of Huda Beauty has the ability to charge $91,300 (Dh335,344) for a sponsored post on the photo-sharing app, the report found, with Kattan worth an overall $45 million.
However, she says she simply "cannot" bring herself to feature "#sponcon" posts. She does regularly promote her own products in posts.
"I'm not looking to directly monetise our Instagram. Directly being able to do shoppable links – when that happens, sure, why not? But now, I don't want it to feel like it's not real," she told Entrepreneur magazine last year. "I don't think you should feel shame making money off that, as long as you're doing it really naturally as opposed to something that is forced."
"I had been looking at a car I was ready to buy, but I ended up turning it down," she continued. "It was painful for me and my husband to reject it, because it was a lot of money. I know you have to identify it as an ad, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. I thought about Oprah. I was like, would Oprah do that? No, she wouldn’t."
Kattan is now best known for her tongue-in-cheek and off-beat beauty videos, and re-posting how-to videos from fans:
What are the Dubai Stars?
The Dubai Stars will decorate Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard when they are unveiled in October.
The stars, which will form Dubai's upcoming Walk of Fame project, will pay homage to local and international personalities from various fields including music, film, art, architecture, sport and literature, as well as social influencers.
Ahead of the official launch, the project has been unveiling some of the famous names that will decorate the stars.
In total, there will be 10,000 stars on the walk, however, to begin with, there will be 400, which will be voted for by the public.
Kattan isn't the only name to be announced in the last month. Bollywood legend Anil Kapoor, Wolf of Wall Street star Margot Robbie and Emirati director Ali Mostafa have all been given a nod by Emaar.
A-list names who have been honoured with a Dubai Star:
