Our story
A five-year-old in a hospital bed made the thing nobody would make for her
Aarti and Yana Solanki - mother and daughter, and the whole of Yani Beauty.
Highly Commended for Beauty & Wellness at the SHE Awards 2026, and winner of a Prestige Award 2025 for Natural Skincare in the Midlands region.
How one question became a brand
The hospital stay
"Mummy, can we make our own lip balms?"
Dry ward air left five-year-old Yana's lips cracked and bleeding, and every balm they tried made it worse.
The first batch
Plain Jane is born
Armed with a tutorial called Lip Balms 101, Yana and Aarti researched gentle ingredients and hand-poured their first vegan balm. It worked.
The range grows
From one balm to skincare
Plain Jane became six flavours, then Aarti's own reactive skin pushed the pair into jojoba cleansing oil, glow serum and hemp balm.
Today
Awards and ambassadorship
Yana, now eleven, is a We Can Be ambassador for young entrepreneurs - and Yani Beauty was Highly Commended for Beauty & Wellness at the SHE Awards 2026 and won a Prestige Award 2025 for Natural Skincare in the Midlands region.
When Yana was admitted to hospital, the dry ward air left her lips cracked and bleeding. Every balm they tried made it worse - too harsh, too full of things none of us can pronounce, or simply useless.
So she asked the question this whole business is built on: "Mummy, can we make our own lip balms?" Aarti admits she laughed it off at first - neither of them knew the first thing about formulating anything. Then Yana turned up with a tutorial called "Lip Balms 101", and it was clear she meant it.
They researched gentle, natural ingredients together and handcrafted their very first balm: Plain Jane. It worked. Her lips healed, and a five-year-old had solved her own problem - which, as her mentors at We Can Be put it, is more than most grown-ups manage.
From one balm to a range
Plain Jane became a family of flavours, and then something bigger. Aarti's own reactive, sensitive skin pushed the pair into skincare: a jojoba cleansing oil, a glow serum, and a hemp balm heavy enough for hands that take a beating. Yana - now eleven, and an ambassador for the We Can Be programme - still tests and signs off every flavour.
What is We Can Be?
We Can Be is a UK entrepreneurship programme for children and teenagers aged 6-18. Built with girls in mind and open to every aspiring entrepreneur, it turns business ideas into short, practical missions - finding a problem, naming and branding a solution, pricing it, testing it on real people and pitching it.
- Self-paced, interactive courses for ages 9-11, 12-14 and 15-18.
- Games, quizzes, calculators and simulators to put business and money skills into practice.
- A library of 250+ real female founders across sectors and backgrounds.
- A storybook for ages 6-9 and a practical business workbook for ages 10-14.
- An AI business coach that adapts to their age and helps when they get stuck.
- 140+ handpicked resources from other organisations, gathered in one place.
What we stand for
- Natural ingredients, chosen for sensitive and reactive skin.
- Waterless formulations wherever the product allows it.
- vegan and cruelty-free. Never tested on animals.
- Sustainability taken seriously, in packaging and in batch sizes.
- Every INCI list printed on the product page, never hidden behind a tab.
- Encouraging the next generation to make things - Yana is proof it works.
Nothing is contract-manufactured. Every batch is mixed, poured, cooled and labelled by hand in the East Midlands, in runs small enough that we know which afternoon your jar was made on.
Yani Beauty also won a Prestige Award 2025 for Natural Skincare in the Midlands region.
Start where most people start
Plain Jane for them, the cleansing oil for you. Or the whole routine as a set.