Women To Know 2026 ‘Founding Mothers’ — Danessa Myricks, Janell Stephens And Ashunta Sheriff On Building Brands And Navigating Motherhood
A day on set with Danessa Myricks, Janell Stephens, and Ashunta Sheriff reveals how they’re building brands rooted in community, discipline, and lived experience. The post Women To Know 2026 ‘Founding Mothers’ — Danessa Myricks, Janell Stephens And Ashunta Sheriff On Building Brands And Navigating Motherhood appeared first on MadameNoire.
Black News 
After months of cold weather, it’s the first really nice day in NYC. The kind that brings out short shorts and flowy dresses and reunites your skin with a kiss from the sun. Inside a studio in Chelsea, that warmth carries through the room.
At first glance, it may seem like a typical cover shoot. It isn’t. The women at the center of it are usually the ones preparing others for the spotlight—shaping faces, building looks, and working just out of frame. Today, they’re the ones in front of the camera, a position each of them has had to grow into.
Danessa Myricks, Janell Stephens, and Ashunta Sheriff all arrive with their own glam teams—though Danessa and Ashunta do their own makeup. “I know my face best,” Myricks says with a bright, easy confidence, Sheriff nodding in agreement. Across the room, Janell tracks the movement with a quiet focus as her hairstylist finishes pinning her curls into place.
On the table is a scattering of Danessa’s Universal Blurring Balms. The makeup artist assigned to my face already has a full-size in her kit—a quiet signal of her reach. I lean toward Ashunta to tell her how much I love her UV Vegan Mascara—“a must-have for festival season,” I say. She smiles. Her approach to beauty is expressive but grounded—high pigment, high impact, but always designed to work across real skin.
Later, I open Instagram and see Kim Kardashian styling her daughter, Chicago’s hair using Camille Rose’s Curl Love Moisture Milk and Curl Maker. Soft, defined curls are pulled into a half-up, half-down style. Kim mentions it’s one of her favorite parts of the morning before school. It’s a reminder that what Janell built at home for her own children now lives far beyond it.
The post Women To Know 2026 ‘Founding Mothers’ — Danessa Myricks, Janell Stephens And Ashunta Sheriff On Building Brands And Navigating Motherhood appeared first on MadameNoire.
