Pooka Pure and Simple, City of Orange

Dawn Fitch's path to the March 2012 cover of Black Enterprise is paved with all-natural, handmade soap. Strangely, her path to founding Pooka Pure and Simple and becoming a cover girl began with a mysterious illness. Her doctors' confusion led her to investigate the ingredients in nearly every product she touched and to seek out alternative health care, which is how she discovered the therapeutic properties of essential oils.

As part of a self-preserving lifestyle overhaul, Dawn began making her own body products from essential oils, shea and cocoa butters, and fruit powders, ingredients that now comprise her line of cleansers and moisturizers. Nourishing Elbow Grease dispatches dry skin with coconut oil and beeswax instead of threats veiled thinly in petroleum, and shower gels saturate steam with the scent of sugar cookies or bracing basil and citrus. She and three of her "Pookalitas"-a name Dawn's mother gave her as a child that has carried over to her best friends-also craft a line of moisturizing hair tonics that have been lauded in the pages of Essence magazine.

Workshops at the Pooka boutique teach visitors to create beauty products that are free of preservatives, dyes, and harmful chemicals. Dawn also shares her beauty recipes on the company's YouTube channel, and via the Pooka Giveback Program, an annual donation of raffle-ready baskets to four charitable or nonprofit organizations.