Ruka Hair is entering Sephora with something bigger than another beauty launch. For co-founder and CEO Tendai Moyo, the expansion puts a Black woman led company, built around the hair needs of Black women, inside one of the biggest prestige beauty retailers in the United States while opening a category Sephora has not carried in decades.
Ruka Hair is scheduled to launch online at Sephora on August 4, followed by select stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta beginning August 14. Sephora executive Jennifer Lucchese described the braiding bundles as a new category in the retailer’s growing assortment.The significance is not only where Ruka Hair will be sold. It is what Moyo had to build to get there.
“For the first time in 20 years, we’re relaunching a whole new category in Sephora. We’ll be the ONLY hair extensions brand in Sephora, bringing bio-engineered fibers everywhere from Harlem to Times Square,” Moyo wrote on LinkedIn. “The first-ever braiding hair in Sephora. This is the biggest moment in our history because accessibility has always been fundamental to the store,” she continued.
Ruka Hair was cofounded in 2020 by Moyo and Ugo Agbai. Moyo was born in Zimbabwe and Agbai was born in Nigeria. The London company emerged around a problem familiar to many Black women: finding extensions that meet expectations around texture, quality, safety, and sourcing. Rather than positioning Ruka as another product brand, the founders developed the company around textured hair innovation and the consumer experience Black women had long been expected to navigate without much support from mainstream beauty companies.
That mission remains visible in the company itself. On its official Ruka Hair company page, the brand says Black women sit at the center of its approach to product development. Moyo serves as CEO, while Agbai is chief strategy officer. Ruka describes its business as a response to a hair industry that has often developed products without adequately understanding curly, coily, and wavy textures.
Its most ambitious answer so far is Synths 2, the patent pending fiber behind the Sephora expansion.
According to Ruka Hair’s Synths 2 product information, the braiding hair is made with bovine collagen protein fiber rather than traditional plastic based synthetic fiber. The company says the material is biodegradable, hypoallergenic, dyeable, and heat resistant up to 180 degrees Celsius. Ruka also says the fiber is designed to mimic the behavior and appearance of human hair and can be reused two or three times with proper care. Those are company claims, but they show why Ruka increasingly identifies itself as a materials and technology business as much as a beauty company.
“The funding will help us continue scaling Synths 2, our collagen protein fiber-braiding hair, and the wider fiber platform behind it,” Moyo told Black Enterprise. “The right investors have understood that Ruka is not just a beauty brand. It is a science, community, and culture-led business tackling a huge global market,” she continued.
That science driven strategy has also attracted serious capital. Black Enterprise reported that Ruka closed a $4.5 million funding round in 2026, bringing its total funding to about $10 million. Freedom Trail Capital and Henkel Ventures coled the latest round, with participation from Big Issue Invest, Backed VC, and angel investors including British track star Dina Asher Smith and retail executive Sophia Dennis. The company said the investment would support research, testing, manufacturing, supply chain development, retail readiness, and expansion in the United States.
“We are trying to change the quality, safety, and experience of hair extensions for a community that has historically been underserved,” she told Black Enterprise.
That sentence gets to the center of what makes Ruka Hair different. Black women have never been newcomers to extensions, braids, wigs, or protective styling. The barrier has been how rarely major beauty institutions have treated those products with the same investment, merchandising, research, and premium retail experience given to other beauty categories.
Ruka Hair is now challenging that gap from both sides. It is developing new fiber technology while also pushing braiding hair deeper into prestige retail.
That strategy is already visible on Sephora’s official Ruka Hair page, which lists Synths 2 braiding hair in Textured Straight, Afro Kinky, and Bone Straight options alongside styling products including curl gel and edge control. The presence of extensions beside familiar prestige hair products changes the context in which braiding hair is being sold. It brings a product deeply embedded in Black beauty culture into a retail environment where shoppers can encounter it as beauty innovation rather than an afterthought.
For Moyo, that may be the barrier worth watching most closely. Ruka Hair did not reach Sephora by separating itself from Black women. It reached Sephora by building more deeply around them.
