In 2016, a young woman from Kokstad pressed record on a makeup tutorial and uploaded it to YouTube. It looked, to most people, like a pastime. Ten years later, she runs a platform that connects clients with beauty specialists across South Africa, owns a luxury boutique in Sandton City, funds community projects through a foundation she co-founded, and has been named to the Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 list. Mihlali Ndamase’s story is often told through the glamour of the finished picture. The more useful story is how she built the frame.
She was born on 29 November 1996 in Kokstad, in KwaZulu-Natal, and grew up there in a household of women: her mother, her grandmother and her aunt. She attended an all-girls boarding school in Pietermaritzburg, and according to profiles of her early life, she was already thinking like an entrepreneur in high school, selling jewellery to classmates. It is a small detail, but it points to something that runs through her career. She has never been content to simply take part in a market. She has always been looking for a way to own a piece of it.
Before the camera made her famous, she trained. Ndamase holds a Bachelor of Arts in Strategic Brand Communications from Vega School, and she completed makeup training at LISOF as well as MAC PRO certification. The combination matters. Behind every tutorial was a woman who understood both the craft of makeup and the business of brands: how a product is positioned, why an audience trusts one voice over another, and what it takes to turn attention into something lasting. Many creators learn that lesson late. She arrived with it.
The growth was quick. Her YouTube channel launched in 2016, she made her television debut on E! VIP Africa, and by late 2017 her videos had passed two million views. In 2019, she swept the awards that mark a creator’s arrival: Influencer of the Year and Best Beauty Influencer at the Cosmopolitan South Africa Influencer Awards, Socialite of the Year at the Feather Awards, and Next Big Thing at the South African Style Awards. For a young woman who had started with a camera and a point of view, it was public proof that the audience she had built was real.
What many people overlook is that she began giving back almost as soon as she began earning attention. In 2017, with her friend Dineo Nono, she co-founded the Siyasizana Foundation, a nonprofit focused on supporting underprivileged communities in South Africa. The name is isiZulu and isiXhosa for helping one another, and it describes the idea well. She was in her early twenties, and the project sat alongside, not behind, her growing brand. In 2021, her wider influence was recognised when Forbes Africa included her in its 30 Under 30 list.
The next chapter was about ownership. Malakyt, the platform she leads as CEO, connects clients with beauty specialists across South Africa, giving independent makeup artists and stylists a place to be found and booked. In November 2023, she launched Mihlali’s Kloset, a fashion venture built around selling pieces from her own wardrobe. In 2025, she opened Treasury, a luxury boutique at The Marc in Sandton City. Each move shifts her one step further from promoting other people’s products and one step closer to owning the place where products, and the people behind them, are discovered. It is the difference between being the face of an industry and building a piece of its infrastructure.
None of this has happened in private. Anyone who has followed her career knows it has unfolded under constant public attention, including the online speculation and opinion that tend to follow women who are visible and successful at a young age. What the record shows is that she has kept building through it. She has appeared on screen in Generations: The Legacy and the Netflix telenovela Savage Beauty, and she has been announced as a guest presenter at the TikTok Awards Sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, GLAMOUR named her among the experts joining its Hair & Beauty Masterclass 2026, an event built around teaching the craft she once taught herself on camera.
Her path offers three lessons for the women who follow her. Train in the skill, not just the platform. Give early, and keep giving as you grow. And move, as soon as you can, from renting attention to owning something that outlasts it. None of the three is glamorous, and all of them are easy to postpone. She did them in the order that suited her, and she did them while the world was watching.
Ring lights are easy to buy. What is harder to find is the patience to build what stands behind them. At the age of twenty-nine, Mihlali Ndamase has turned a decade of visibility into a platform, a boutique, a resale venture and a foundation, all of it built her way. The title of this feature says she built an empire on her own terms. The more accurate statement may be that she never waited for anyone else to write them.
