The 60-year-old beauty exec who’s cracking the code on Gen Z

E.l.f. Beauty’s Tarang Amin is rallying staff in their 20s and 30s to grow an affordable beauty brand that’s a hit with teens.

Tarang Amin, the unassuming CEO of E.l.f. Beauty, has cultivated Gen Z as both the company’s customer base and an important part of their workforce. Picture: Carolyn Fong for The Wall Street Journal

At a recent all-staff town hall, e.l.f. Beauty employees joined in a few minutes of box breathing. In one of the boxes on the Zoom screen was chief executive Tarang Amin, who was inhaling, holding, exhaling and holding, too.

Employees gave shout-outs, congratulating each other on achievements and introducing new young employees. Fire and applause emojis and exclamation points blew up the chat. At the half-hour mark Amin spoke for the first time to launch the agenda topic of fair-trade initiatives.

“That connection is really important. Certainly with our Gen Z and millennial workforce – they absolutely eat it up,” Amin says in an interview a few days later of his approach. Amin, 60, is hard at work trying to crack the code on something very elusive: Gen Z shoppers and employees.

The $US1.3bn ($1.9bn) Oakland, California-based cosmetics company has developed a devoted fan base of “e.l.f.ies” in their teens and 20s. The brand positions itself as inclusive. Its blush tints, primers and setting sprays sell for $US10 or less in stores such as Target and Walmart, and are labelled cruelty-free and vegan.

Tarang Amin, Chairman and chief executive E.l.f. Beauty speaks onstage at Inside the Industry during The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2025 presented by The Business of Fashion at Stanly Ranch on June 10, 2025 in Napa, California. Picture: Getty Images

Its social media campaigns, such as its 2019 TikTok challenge, spawned a song teens couldn’t stop singing, and slogans such as “e.l.f.ing Amazing” go viral.

E.l.f., which stands for “eyes, lips, face”, recently ranked as the No.1 cosmetics brand among female teens, according to a northern spring 2025 survey by investment bank Piper Sandler.

“We’ve never had to do a focus group in the history of this company because our team, they are our community,” Amin says of the company’s 650 “e.l.f.z”, as it calls its staff. Three-quarters of them are in their 20s and 30s, and most are women. “That really gives us that edge.”

In May, the company made its biggest acquisition to date, the $US1bn cash-and-stock purchase of rhode, a cosmetics and skincare line co-founded by celebrity model Hailey Bieber.

The deal will give e.l.f. a product line in Sephora in the US and expand its reach among 20-somethings and teens.

When e.l.f. executives met Bieber last northern autumn to discuss a partnership over dinner at Funke, a Los Angeles hot spot, some of the team glammed up for the occasion.

“I wore the same thing I wear every day,” says Amin, who hews to a uniform of lightweight Armani V-neck jumpers over an Armani dress shirt with Citizens of Humanity jeans. “It’s really important that what you see is what you get. I’m pretty plain-spoken, pretty plainly dressed.”

The evening went well. “Tarang truly understands what we’re building at rhode, and I couldn’t think of a better partner as we step into the next phase of our business,” Bieber wrote in an email.

Tarang Amin, the unassuming CEO of E.l.f. Beauty, has cultivated Gen Z as both the company’s customer base and an important part of their workforce. Picture: Carolyn Fong for The Wall Street Journal

Amin was born in Kenya to Indian parents. The family immigrated to the US when Amin was a child. When he was 14, his parents started to buy and run motels in Alexandria, Virginia. Amin did everything from staffing the front desk to making up rooms and, in the process, says he learned a great deal about the importance of customer service. By observing his parents, he also learned about treating employees with respect and incentivising them.

Amin’s father developed a system where if managers hit certain goals, they would get help financing their own motel property to eventually own. It was a way to motivate employees and cut down on thefts from the register.

“It was one of the things that led to me really insisting that everyone get equity in the company,” he says, referring to e.l.f., where all employees get restricted stock units that vest over time.

Amin went to Duke University, where he got his MBA. After graduation he joined Procter & Gamble, where he spent nearly 12 years as a marketing director. He spent the next eight years at Clorox in vice-president roles before getting his first chief executive role in 2011 at Schiff Nutrition International, a provider of vitamins, supplements and nutrition bars. Three years later, TPG Growth, an arm of private-equity group TPG, acquired a majority stake in e.l.f. from TSG Consumer Partners and appointed Amin as chief executive.

 The company was founded in 2004 with a vision of creating affordable cosmetics, including dupes of high-end brands, and rose to prominence by promoting $US1 makeup online.

Amin, who is married with two adult children, listens to his younger employees. It was, according to Amin, a few Gen Z employees in Los Angeles who came up with the idea to connect with Oliver Widger, who had amassed a following of 1.3 million TikTokers after quitting his corporate job to sail around the world with his cat, Phoenix. Widger wasn’t exactly your typical makeup influencer but that was the point.

Just before Widger completed the first leg of his sailing trip – from Oregon to Hawaii – e.l.f. air-dropped a care package including sandwiches, cat treats and e.l.f. sunscreen to Widger, who quickly posted about it. He then joined the brand on a Twitch live stream and teamed up with e.l.f. on a Roblox “game jam” contest.

At first Amin was worried the care package didn’t have e.l.f. branding. “The Gen Z employees, they’re like, ‘No, no, Tarang. We don’t need to brand it. That’s what a big company would do,’ ” he says. “ ‘The word will get out there.’ ”

Word did get out. The live stream got 150,000 views and eventually reached millions, according to e.l.f., which has 7.5 million followers on Instagram and 2.4 million followers on TikTok.

Such gambits generate buzz that keeps customers loyal and willing to spend more while increasing brand awareness to attract new fans. “He is one of the best consumer-insights leaders I have ever seen,” says Kirk Perry, interim chief executive at consumer health company Kenvue, who worked with Amin at P&G.

When Amin learnt a younger employee was a video-gamer, the company put her on its Twitch channel and subsequently made that part of her full-time role.

“Gen Z in particular does not want to be put in a box,” Amin says. “They don’t want us to say, ‘This is what your role is, and this is all you’re allowed to do.’ ”

The Wall Street Journal