You probably know Taraji P. Henson as the veteran actress hailed for her excellence, portraying the cross-border mathematician Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures or the fictional renegade matriarch Cookie Lyon in Fox’s Empire. Your acting skills are beyond dispute – that’s just a fact. But if you follow Henson on social media or pay attention to her red carpet appearances, you may have noticed another strength of her: She’s seriously adventurous when it comes to her hair. A self-proclaimed hair chameleon, Henson cycles through braids, bobs, curls, and more vibrant hair colors than anyone in Hollywood without ever skipping a beat. She just does it, but as she said in an exclusive interview with Who What Wear recently, it hasn’t always been.
“When I moved to Hollywood, I had to start wearing woven fabrics because Hollywood hadn’t embraced black women’s natural hair,” she said. “But you know, you just don’t put a tissue in your hair and say it is. Sometimes a tissue is a lot more work than a natural one because you wash two different hairs; you wash the tissue of hair and you have to get under it all and take care of your own scalp and hair. ”And what happened when she couldn’t find products that met that need? She created a hair care line, TPH by Taraji, based on formulations she had created for herself in her kitchen.
