The hair journey of Camille Howard-Verović, D.O., started like that of many other women: She was seeking convenience and practicality in managing her curls. But what began as a quest to find the right products for her hair soon became a mission to create something better for Black women everywhere.
During Howard-Verović’s childhood years, trips to her Aunt Shirley’s salon in Miami were a ritual. There, she and her family would maintain their relaxed hair with protective styles. But as she transitioned to adulthood—moving to New York City in 2007 to pursue a marketing career— the wife and mother of one started to notice the toll that chemical processing was taking on her strands. “I remember losing a lot of hair because I was relaxing it,” she recalls. “And then I’d braid it down and wear a sew-in weave, so I was just super concerned about the health of my hair.”
That concern led her, in 2009, to make a life-changing decision. At age 30, she underwent the Big Chop. That same year, the former marketing executive decided to make a career change by pursuing her medical degree at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine. As she worked on completing her studies—and became more familiar with navigating the health care system—she and her husband partnered with a chemist to create the ideal hair care product.
While Howard-Verović felt supported in her personal journey by the burgeoning natural-hair movement happening online, real-life products to nurture her growing Afro hadn’t yet materialized. “I wanted a very specific product,” she explains. “When I would look for shampoo, it was like, why is it so thick? Isn’t it going to be hard to get under my weave? And as I asked those specific questions, I would say to myself, Wow, I can’t be the only one with this issue.”
As Black women have done for generations, Howard-Verović took matters into her own hands. She decided to create her own product line, Girl + Hair, to address the needs of women with textured strands who wear protective styles. In 2014, she added doctor to her name—and founder to her résumé, with the development of a hair care shampoo formulated to cleanse under weaves, braids and other protective styles without leaving residue.
Ever the marketing maven, she began introducing women to her product at natural-hair events. “That community was tremendous—so much support,” she says. “We did CURLFEST, we did the curly circuit, and the reception was incredible. People just got it.” By 2018, the enthusiastic response led to Girl + Hair’s inclusion in the Target Takeoff Program, which helps up-and-coming brands scale their products to the next level.
Now 45 and a board-certified dermatologist with her own practice, Howard- Verović has created a community that has empowered hundreds of thousands of Black women to love their tresses. Girl + Hair has grown to include more than a dozen products—with healthy ingredients, like pumpkin seed and rosemary oil, that strengthen and promote hair growth and encourage women with all curl patterns to rock their natural hair with greater ease. One customer raved about the brand’s hydrating hair milk: “This was the only product to grow my hair and moisturize it. I love this product, and loved it even more when I found out it was formulated by a Black doctor.”
And Howard-Verović is loving Black women back—using her extensive platform to educate them, and women of all races, about skin and hair health. Through videos on Instagram, where she has 32,000 followers, and TikTok, where she has nearly 182,000 followers, she covers everything from proper face washing routines to managing too-tight braids. And she debunks harmful myths; one is that dirty hair grows faster. Howard-Verović points out that a clean scalp is a healthy one, and “a healthy scalp is like having a good, fertilized flower bed; if the scalp is healthy, that’s where you’re going to have the best yield.” She offers products, like the Ultimate Braid Care Kit, to take the pain out of wash day and motivate clients to wash their hair weekly. Her video on how to use the kit is one of her most popular.
As one of the few Black dermatologists in the field, Howard-Verović doesn’t take her influence lightly. She considers being able to take care of Black women, no matter how they wear their hair, to be one of the most fulfilling aspects of her life and work. “Only 3 percent of dermatologists in the U.S. are of African descent, according to the National Library of Medicine,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important for us to be on social media—we need to be accessible.”
This story originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of ESSENCE magazine.
