Black Excellence: Kadi Lee
https://www.behindherempire.com/episode/kadi-lee
Kadi Lee is a celebrity hair colorist and the co-founder of Highbrow Hippie, a luxury beauty and wellness brand rooted in clean ingredients, intentional rituals, and timeless beauty.
Growing up in a small town outside New York, Kadi learned to care for her own textured hair at just eleven, sparking a passion for beauty that would shape her life. That passion took her from a college side hustle to training at Aveda and working in some of New York City’s top salons. In 2019, she and her longtime friend Myka Harris brought that experience to Venice Beach, launching Highbrow Hippie — a beauty and wellness destination that embodies clean living and a laid-back California vibe, which we’re going to talk all about today. She’s become a go-to for celebrity clients from Julia Roberts to Meghan Markle to Gwyneth Paltrow.
Highbrow Hippie was founded in 2011 by Kadi Lee and Myka Harris as a platform for thoughtful conversation around beauty, culture, and conscious living. In 2019, that community became physical with the opening of the Highbrow Hippie Atelier in Venice, California – a space designed to bring hair health to the forefront of the beauty conversation.
Working behind the chair, Kadi began seeing a consistent pattern: meaningful hair loss, thinning, and breakage tied to major life transitions – stress, hormonal shifts, illness, postpartum, perimenopause. Hair was rarely the isolated issue. It was often the first visible signal of internal change.