It’s been three years since Bonjout Beauty launched with a single product — a skin salve that took five years, 12 labs, 68 active ingredients and over 100 iterations to perfect.
Now founder Natacha Bonjout is introducing its complement.
The French pharmacist and cosmetic chemist on Tuesday will introduce the La Cream Skin Longevity Crème, which will retail for $170. Plant biotechnology, NAD+ boosters and peptides fuel the formula, which took two rounds of clinical trials, three years and over 80 iterations to land on.
It’s what Bonjout thinks the next phase of French pharmacy-minded beauty products should look like. “When I launched Le Balm, people were shocked I had one project. I decided to follow my gut, which was that being ‘less is more’ is not a slogan,” Bonjout said. “I will never launch something that I’m not truly convinced is different.”
That value proposition is resonating. The brand’s revenues, built off of a single product, were roughly $10 million in 2025. That brand interest is purely organic, and Bonjout doesn’t see herself expanding the brand beyond its current distribution.
“I’m not sure I’m going to launch one day with big retailers because my way of thinking is so different than what the industry is expecting from a brand,” Bonjout said. In that vein, she said the formula is an “inverse emulsion,” meaning that the ratio of actives to water more closely resembles skin’s lipid structure.
“When you apply this rich cream, you really feel that disappear,” Bonjout said. “When I was formulating it, I wondered why we don’t have more of this type of emulsion on the market. Well, it costs four times more than a classic emulsion and it’s also very tricky to formulate, since it’s made with a cold process.”
In 2025, skin care grew 3 percent in the prestige market and 6 percent in the mass market, according to Circana data. “Skin care, at the end of the day, is about efficacy. If products work, consumers come back, and if they’re able to save money that’s even better,” said Larissa Jensen, senior vice president of beauty and industry adviser at Circana, at the time.
As that pertains to the moisturizer launch, Bonjout said the strategy is focused around product efficacy. “It’s all about education,” she said. “People might think the balm and the rich cream are not compatible together, and in fact, they work super well. We need to educate them, show the before-and-afters.”
