Meet Pretti5—A Brand Inspired by the Founder’s Personal Skin Struggles

by Nurain Alicharan

Published Mar 18, 2024

While living and working in bustling Hong Kong, Pretti5 Founder Dorothy Chau saw her skin failing as her business career was rising. She thrived in a busy, metropolitan city, but her skin did the exact opposite. Lifestyle factors like stress, humidity, bad air quality, and frequent traveling caused her skin to show signs of stress and irritation—like dryness, sensitivity, and uneven texture. As she experimented with product after product, not only did they fail to deliver the desired results but also exacerbated her skin issues further. Finally, as a last resort, she decided to visit a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. Little did she know this visit would not only transform her skin, but also her career.

TCM is commonly used in Eastern culture to holistically prevent, restore, and heal problems that affect the body, mind, and soul. After a few visits, Chau saw the herbal remedies soothe her stress-induced skin but couldn’t ignore the fact that these time-consuming doctors visits weren’t conducive to her busy schedule. That’s when the idea of Pretti5 was born—Chau saw TCM-infused skincare formulas as a way to bring these time-honored herbal remedies to her home and routine.

With a goal to create the best TCM-infused solution on the market, Chau started exploring production labs. She traveled worldwide—visiting labs in Europe, the United States, and Asia—in hopes of finding the best complementary technologies to combine the 2,000-year-old TCM practice with modern, innovative dimensions, finally settling on a top-tier laboratory in Japan.

“My dream is to bring together the best of all worlds,” Chau affirms. “My personal struggle with sensitive skin greatly inspired how we designed the first line of Pretti5 products.”

The main purpose of all Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies is to regulate the energy functions of the whole body and keep it in harmony. Chinese herbal medicines are used to maintain the balance of an individual’s “Qi” energy. This led to the creation of Pretti5, with its name derived from “prettify” and referencing the five key elements of TCM—earth, fire, water, metal, and wind.

The brand’s meticulous selection of natural ingredients has led to a range of effective and gentle skincare for all skin types. (Just take a look at Pretti5’s extensive glossary of ingredients to get a sense of the work that’s gone into these skincare solutions!)

See what happens when east meets west by combining TCM, oriental adaptogens, and western science. Check out Pretti5’s natural, herbal-inspired formulas, now available at Beautylish.