Amanda E. Johnson

Amanda E. Johnson attended Harvard Business School, where she and KJ Miller identified the nude lip shade gap for darker skin tones at a cocktail party in 2015.¹ The mainstream beauty industry had spent decades defining ‘nude’ as beige tones designed for lighter complexions, leaving darker-skinned women either unserved or relying on workarounds. Johnson and Miller decided to solve it.

They launched Mented Cosmetics in 2017 — the name derived from ‘pigmented.’¹ The brand’s initial focus was nude lip shades formulated specifically for melanin-rich skin tones, with the tagline ‘made for you.’ They sold directly to consumers online, built a community through social media, and then raised venture capital to scale production and distribution.

Raising the Capital

In 2017, Johnson and Miller raised $1 million in venture capital funding — among the first sixteen Black women in American history to raise $1 million or more in VC.² Total funding reached $9 million over subsequent rounds.² Each raise required making the market-size argument to investors who had been told Black beauty consumers were a niche. Each check written was institutional validation that the argument was correct.

The Acquisition (2024)

In April 2024, West Lane Capital acquired Mented Cosmetics.³ The acquisition terms were not publicly disclosed. Johnson and Miller had grown Mented from a cocktail-party concept to a nationally distributed, venture-funded brand in eight years. The acquisition validated both the product thesis — darker skin tone consumers are a market, not a niche — and the founder thesis — that Black women could raise institutional VC and build scalable consumer brands.

The Niche Label and the Funding Gap

When Johnson and Miller raised capital for Mented, they faced two compounding constraints: the 'niche market' framing that institutional investors applied to beauty products for darker skin tones, and the racial and gender funding gap in venture capital that made it difficult for Black women founders to access institutional capital regardless of their market thesis. These were not separate problems — they reinforced each other. Investors who believed darker skin tones were a niche market were also less likely to take meetings with Black women founders, and investors who were reluctant to take those meetings were more likely to dismiss the market size argument without testing it.

Raising the first $1 million required Johnson and Miller to simultaneously make the market size argument (darker skin tones are not a niche), the competitive differentiation argument (Mented's formulas are specifically designed for these tones), and the founder credibility argument (two Harvard Business School graduates with relevant consumer experience). They made all three arguments at every pitch, to investors who often required more evidence than comparable white male founders would have needed to present.

Acquired by West Lane Capital, 2024

West Lane Capital acquired Mented Cosmetics in May 2024. The acquisition terms were not publicly disclosed. Over eight years, Mented had raised $9 million in venture capital, expanded beyond its initial lip shade focus to include foundation, concealer, and other categories, and built national distribution through direct-to-consumer channels and retail partnerships.

Johnson and Miller were among the first sixteen Black women in American history to raise $1 million or more in venture capital funding. The category of beauty products specifically formulated for darker skin tones has expanded significantly since 2016, with major brands launching dedicated lines. Mented was among the companies that demonstrated the commercial viability of that market. The acquisition is the exit. The market proof is the legacy.