Brooke Shields Got Inspiration for Her Hair Care Brand in an Unlikely Place: Zoom

Brooke Shields launched Commence and stepped into the CEO role for the first time in her 50s—and learned some important lessons along the way.

BY ALI DONALDSON, STAFF REPORTER @ALICDONALDSON

Brooke Shields. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Courtesy Commence

Brooke Shields built her own customer base before she ever had a product to sell to them. But that online community did not start on Instagram, where the 60-year-old actor and model commands 2.8 million followers, or on TikTok, where she posts videos to another 1.4 million people.

During the height of the pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home, Shields started hosting sprawling video calls for women over the age of 40. In groups of 50 people at a time, the women convened with glasses of wine and talked through what they were experiencing physically and emotionally at this stage in their lives. The conversations morphed into unintended focus groups as different flavors of the same complaint kept coming up.

“The beauty industry was not marketing to us,” recalls Shields, who says women felt as if the only groups to be sorted into were “you’re the hot girl at the bar or you’re in Depends.” She adds: “They were talking about thinning and dryness and scalp irritation and certain changes that were happening as we age, but that there were few brands that were actually targeting that demo.”

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So like any good Princeton graduate, Shields started researching and analyzing market trends. She spoke with product formulators. She learned the science behind those complaints. (Our pores shrink as we age.) Then she spotted an opportunity to address them. 

“There were no shampoos or conditioners or serums that were specifically geared towards the over-40 scalp,” says Shields, who wanted to approach the scalp like any other area of skincare. “We realized that there was a huge gap in the market.”

Nobody was creating this hypothetical product the women on her Zoom calls wanted, so Shields decided to herself. That idea became Commence, a direct-to-consumer hair care brand designed for women over 40. In June of 2024, Shields launched the startup and self-funded its first hero product: an instant dry shampoo. Last year, the company raised a $3.5 million seed round, but the three-person operation has remained small and turned down early offers to expand into Ulta and Sephora. 

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