Mariam Timmer first became familiar to many viewers as one of the outspoken, memorable personalities on The Real Housewives of Lagos, where audiences got a glimpse of her friendships, family life, style, and larger-than-life personality. Away from the cameras, however, Mariam has been steadily building another side of her story as the founder and CEO of LURÈ Beauty, a luxury organic skincare brand centred on effective skincare, self-care and community.
Since launching LURÈ, she has grown the brand’s retail presence, taken its pop-up experiences to Lagos and Abuja and begun laying the groundwork for further expansion. And while the beauty market is certainly not short of skincare brands, Mariam believes there is room for LURÈ to carve out an identity of its own.
In this interview with Yinka Olatunbosun, she talks about why she ventured into beauty, what sets LURÈ apart in an increasingly crowded market, the products she personally swears by, and what is next for the brand.
Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you decide to launch LURÈ Beauty, and was there a particular skincare need or experience that inspired the brand?
LURÈ BEAUTY began in 2017, driven by my desire to create something deeply personal. After years of helping other brands tell their stories through PR, I wanted to build a brand that reflected my own values, creativity, and vision.
I have always believed that skincare should be more than a routine. It should be an experience—something that makes you feel good about yourself. I wanted to create products that combined carefully selected organic ingredients with beautiful textures and luxurious fragrances, while making self-care feel effortless and intentional.
That became the foundation of LURÈ BEAUTY.
The beauty industry is already incredibly saturated, with new skincare brands launching constantly. Did that ever make you hesitate, and what convinced you there was still room for LURÈ?
Of course I thought about it. Any entrepreneur who enters a crowded market has to ask themselves, “Why me, and why now?” But I never believed the answer was simply to create another skincare brand.
I believed there was room for LURÈ because I saw an opportunity to create a different kind of skincare experience—one that brings together carefully selected natural ingredients, beautiful fragrances, indulgent textures, and a sense of everyday luxury.
For me, LURÈ isn’t about competing by being louder. It’s about being intentional and creating a brand people can feel connected to. I wanted skincare to feel less like a routine and more like a personal ritual—a moment of self-care that people genuinely look forward to.
Take us through the LURÈ range. What products do you currently offer, and what skin concerns are they designed to address?
The LURÈ range is designed as a complete body-care ritual, with each product serving a different purpose.
Our Organic Shea Butter is made from unrefined Grade A shea butter, retaining it’s naturally occurring nutrients and beneficial properties. It is rich, deeply nourishing, and designed to moisturise and soften the skin from the surface, helping support healthy-looking, supple skin.
Our Organic Vanilla & Shea Butter combines the richness of Grade A shea butter with the warm, beautiful organic fragrance of vanilla, creating an indulgent moisturising ritual.
Our Golden Cares Coconut Elixir is a fragrant body oil—lightweight, nourishing and designed to leave the skin feeling soft, smooth and beautifully radiant while adding a luxurious scent to the body-care experience.
Then we have our Glow Polish Collection, featuring our Lumière Citrus Lavender, Radiant Orange, and Radiant Lavender Foaming Exfoliating Sugar Scrubs. They are designed to exfoliate, brighten the appearance of dull skin, improve the look of uneven texture and help reduce the appearance of body hyperpigmentation with consistent use.
We know concerns about uneven skin tone and body hyperpigmentation are incredibly common, so we wanted our scrubs to go beyond simple exfoliation—designed to be part of a consistent body-care ritual focused on revealing smoother, brighter, more radiant-looking skin.
What I love most is how the collection works together: exfoliate, brighten, nourish, moisturise and finish with fragrance. It is skincare, but it is also an experience.
Every founder secretly has a favourite. Which LURÈ product could you personally never do without, and why?
Honestly, this is such a difficult question because I love every LURÈ product. They are all very close to my heart because I have personally been involved in bringing each one to life, and each product was created with a different purpose in mind.
But if I absolutely had to choose, my three favourites would be our Golden Cares Coconut Elixir, Organic Vanilla & Shea Butter, and our Glow Polish Collection.
How involved are you in developing the products—from deciding what LURÈ launches next to ingredients, formulations, textures and packaging?
I am extremely hands-on—probably more than I should be! I personally designed and shaped almost every aspect of LURÈ BEAUTY as a brand, from the products themselves to the ingredients, formulations, textures, fragrances, marketing, branding, packaging, bottles, labels and the overall customer experience.
I wanted everything to feel 100% curated and intentional. Nothing was created simply to fill a shelf. Every detail had to make sense and feel true to the LURÈ identity.
Hopefully, as LURÈ grows, I will be able to delegate more and build a strong team that can carry parts of that responsibility with me. But even then, I know I will always be involved to some degree because I genuinely love these products and I love creating them.
For me, LURÈ isn’t just a business I built; it is something I have poured a great deal of myself into. Every product carries a piece of my vision, and that is why I take the development process so personally.
What has surprised you most about the business of beauty since launching your own skincare brand?
Before LURÈ, I understood branding and PR professionally, but building a beauty brand has given me an entirely different perspective. You can create a beautiful product, but there are so many layers behind making people discover it, trust it, experience it, and ultimately make it part of their lives. I’ve also been surprised by how personal beauty is. Everyone has a different relationship with their skin, their body and their definition of feeling beautiful. Listening to our customers has taught me that people aren’t simply looking for products—they want products they can trust and experiences that make them feel good.
Another thing that surprised me is how much attention to detail matters. From a product’s fragrance and texture to the bottle, label, packaging, photography, and even how it is presented in a store, everything shapes how people perceive a brand.
And perhaps the biggest surprise has been how emotionally invested I have become. I knew I would love LURÈ, but I didn’t realise just how much I would care about every product, every customer and every detail.
LURÈ positions itself as a luxury organic skincare brand. What makes a skincare product worth paying a premium for when there are so many affordable alternatives?
For me, premium pricing should never be about simply putting a higher price on a product. It has to be justified by the quality, the experience, the attention to detail and the value you are giving the customer.
With LURÈ, we are very intentional about the ingredients we select, the textures we create, the fragrances, the packaging and the entire experience from the moment someone discovers the brand to the moment they use the product.
Our Organic Shea Butter, for example, is made with unrefined Grade A shea butter because I wanted to preserve the ingredient’s natural qualities rather than compromise what goes into the product.
But luxury isn’t only about ingredients. It’s about intention. It’s about how a product feels in your hands, how it feels on your skin, how it smells, how it fits into your lifestyle and how confident you feel using it.
Beyond LURÈ, you are also a wife, mother and familiar face from The Real Housewives of Lagos. How do you manage all these different parts of your life without feeling pulled in every direction?
I don’t think I have mastered the art of balancing everything perfectly—and I’m not sure anyone really does. For me, it’s about being intentional with my priorities and understanding that different seasons of my life require different things from me.
My family will always come first. Being a wife and a mother is part of who I am, and I deeply value it; I never want my ambition to come at the expense of being present for the people I love.
At the same time, I’m a woman with big dreams. I have LURÈ, my PR career and Six Sixteen Agency, my philanthropic work through The Nova Pearl Initiative, and my media journey. Each represents a different part of me, and I don’t believe I should have to choose between being a mother and being ambitious.
There are definitely days when it feels overwhelming, but I’ve learned to give myself grace. I prioritise what truly matters, delegate where I can, and remind myself that I don’t have to do everything perfectly—I just have to remain present and purposeful.
Being on The Real Housewives of Lagos puts everything from your personality to your beauty choices in front of a huge audience. Has being on television changed your relationship with beauty or the way you present yourself?
Television has definitely made me more conscious of presentation, but it hasn’t changed who I am. If anything, it has made me more confident in understanding what works for me and embracing my individuality.
Being on television means you’re constantly being seen, so there is naturally more attention to your skin, hair, makeup and overall appearance. But I’ve learned that beauty isn’t about trying to look perfect all the time. It’s about feeling confident and comfortable in your own skin.
Interestingly, television also made me appreciate skincare even more. Makeup can create a beautiful finish, but healthy-looking skin is the foundation. That philosophy is part of what I bring into LURÈ BEAUTY—I want people to care for their skin before they think about covering it.
You spend a lot of time thinking about skincare, so give us one beauty or skincare tip you absolutely swear by—and one popular beauty habit you think we should probably stop doing.
One thing I absolutely swear by is consistent exfoliation and moisturising. I believe exfoliating your body two to three times a week is a good routine for most people.
Finally, after building a business around beauty and self-care, what does beauty mean to you personally today?
Beauty means confidence, authenticity and how you feel within yourself. The older I get, the more I realise that beauty isn’t about perfection or trying to fit into someone else’s definition of what beautiful should look like. For me, beauty is taking care of yourself, embracing who you are, and having the confidence to walk into a room without feeling the need to become someone else.
