Years before she became the matriarch of one of music's most famous families, Tina Knowles built a business serving professional women who needed their hair styled—and quickly. That early venture, she says, planted the seeds for Cécred, the hair care line she launched with her daughter Beyoncé Knowles Carter in February 2024.

Speaking Wednesday at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, Fortune's recurring gathering of women leaders from business and beyond, in Santa Barbara, Knowles described the brand as the product of four decades in business, fashion, and entertainment. In the Houston salon where she began her career, she relied on products containing human hair ground into them to add protein to strands, and she mixed butter and hot olive oil treatments to bring more moisture and balance to her clients' hair—her daughters included. Both Knowles Carter and actress and singer-songwriter Solange Knowles worked in the salon, she said.

“The dream has always been to create a product that had everything that you need in one product and one step,” Knowles told Fortune senior writer Sheryl Estrada. “And Beyoncé had that dream as well—because I was doing all those things to her hair.”

Knowles Carter chose to fund the line herself rather than work with outside investors, a decision Knowles attributed to their intense focus on research and development. Investors balked at the costs. The goal, she said, was a product that would not merely sit on top of strands to make them feel smooth, but could penetrate all types of hair textures.

“Our customers have done the marketing for us because it's really a quality product,” Knowles said.

The brand is also a family story. Knowles opened her Headliners salon after her marriage ended, when she needed to support her children, and she told Estrada she resolved at the time never to be dependent again. Because her own salon visits could take hours, she made Headliners a go-to spot for time-pressed professional women: clients were seen within 15 minutes or received their money back. Her daughters got their start there as sweepers, Knowles said, and she worked alongside plenty of entrepreneurial women. Destiny's Child, the blockbuster musical group that became one of the best-selling girl groups of all time, got its start performing for salon customers.

Knowles published her bestselling memoir, Matriarch, last year. While writing it, she said, she learned that the women in her family had a long history of working and designing clothing as seamstresses—reaching back her great- and great-great-grandmothers, who were enslaved. She later styled Destiny's Child through its rise and cofounded a fashion label.

Cécred has made a mark of its own since launching two years ago. The line posted the most successful prestige hair care debut in the history of Ulta Beauty, one of the largest beauty retailers in the United States, has won 89 beauty industry awards, and has expanded into the U.K. The team behind the brand tests its styling and restoring serums and conditioners in three countries in an effort to reach every hair texture.

Despite that success, Knowles was candid about how two divorces have shaped her. When she divorced at 59, she thought her life was over—but she treated it as a turning point, returning to museums, picking up art books, and prioritizing herself again. For years, she said, she had remained low-key in order to avoid embarrassing her children.

“I didn't take credit for a lot of the work that I did as a woman,” Knowles said. “We just do it because it needs to be done.”

At 70, she went through a second divorce, which also left its mark.

“There's something about those divorces that make you take a look at yourself,” she added. That was when she began writing, in part to set an accurate record about a family that strangers narrate on a daily basis on social media. Writing it down, she said, became therapeutic—and made her a bestselling author at 71.

Now at 72, Knowles has shifted her focus to philanthropy, a passion she hopes to pursue full-time in the next few years. She chairs BeyGOOD, Beyoncé's charitable foundation, in addition to her work on Cécred. She also runs her own charity, Waco (Where Art Can Occur), which she started with her ex-husband. The organization mentors girls from Los Angeles communities, offering them trips to art museums, lessons in etiquette, and life skills they would not otherwise receive.

Her next project is the Vision Theatre in Leimert Park, a long-standing hub of Black arts and culture in Los Angeles. Actress Marla Gibbs invested in the theater and planned to turn it into a performing arts center, but lost the building after riots occurred. The city has since poured millions into its restoration, and Knowles plans to follow Gibbs's lead and make it a community arts center.

Having navigated roughly five career pivots, Knowles said she now enters new ventures with no fear. Her advice to younger generations is to give it your all—and if it doesn't work, bring what you learned into the next thing you do. A strong work ethic matters, she said, along with never feeling entitled to anything.

“Just be authentically yourself,” Knowles said. “That's my mantra.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com: https://fortune.com/2026/10/14/tina-knowles-cecred-daughter-beyonce-hair-salon/