Courtesy of JPMorgan
- Beauty has become a major focus area for Wall Street dealmakers.
- JPMorgan's top beauty banker says 2026 could be a big year for the sector.
- Fei-Fei Zhang shares how buyers identify which cosmetics brands are built to last.
The cosmetics industry's glamour has caught Wall Street's eye — and investors are recognizing that beauty is more than skin deep.
Beauty has become a booming sector, driven by a wave of savvy social media creators and startups that are shaping trends and fueling spending. The consulting firm McKinsey predicts that, by 2030, the industry could be worth nearly $600 billion. At JPMorgan, Fei-Fei Zhang is shaping how the bank is approaching the opportunity.
Investment banker Zhang, JPMorgan's head of beauty for North America, has advised on a string of blockbuster deals asector hasctor's gained momentum. Zhang was a senior leader on the team behind the $1 billion sale of Rhode, the skincare brand cofounded by Hailey Bieber, to e.l.f. Beauty, announced last May.
Within weeks, British skincare brand Medik8 was sold to cosmetics giant L'Oreal for more than $1 billion, which Zhang advised on. She also helped Mammoth Brands — founded by the team behind grooming brand Harry's — on its October purchase of the diaper brand Coterie, marking a foray into the vast baby care market.
In April 2025, the bank promoted Zhang to its most powerful rank — managing director — the culmination of the professional rise for a self-proclaimed beauty industry aficionado who started working at JPMorgan as an intern in 2011. By the time she'd made VP, she was pushing her higher-ups to expand in the sector, becoming an architect of its burgeoning cosmetics industry strategy.
Business Insider spoke with Zhang about her predictions for dealmaking in 2026, what makes brands stand out in the boardroom, and how it felt to be a part of the sale of Rhode. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are you getting excited about in 2026?
Specific to beauty, acquisitions have always been central to the industry. One theme we saw last year that will likely carry through is what I'd call corporate clarity. We started to see an uptick in corporate carve-outs, with strategics reorienting their portfolios toward growth platforms and greater margin accretion.
The other driver remains core to the industry: acquisitions of high-growth independent brands that fill portfolio gaps — whether immediately for strategics or through a multi-step path that may involve private equity first.
Courtesy of JPMorgan Chase
How do private equity firms and corporate buyers approach beauty differently? Do you expect the PE firms to step up their activity this year?
Beauty has very attractive qualities for private equity. It's a highly replenishable category, it has stable growth characteristics, and it has proven resilient through economic cycles. When you look at the financials, you often see strong margins and high free-cash-flow generation.
What has shifted is discipline. Buyers are more discerning and are evaluating opportunities with elevated expectations around scale, growth, profitability, and brand history. That reflects lessons learned from prior cycles, including the very high level of M&A activity in 2021.
How are influencer trends shaping the industry in the boardroom?
On social media, the impact has been transformative. It has fundamentally reshaped the beauty industry, enabling an explosion of new entrants and accelerating how quickly a product or brand can gain traction.
That dynamic cuts both ways.
The same forces that propel rapid growth can create challenging expectations to sustain it. Brands are scaling faster than ever, but a key question becomes whether they have the resonance and infrastructure to deliver durable, long-term growth. That question directly affects M&A prospects.
How do buyers evaluate the role of social media engagement when they're thinking about buying a cosmetics company?
Social engagement is incredibly important, but it's only one part of the picture. Buyers are ultimately looking for a powerful identity. They ask: How differentiated is the brand voice? How defensible is it? Does it engender consumer loyalty and advocacy?
You then want to see that translate into the business itself — a financial profile that delivers consistent growth and demonstrates durability. What we see buyers really looking for in today's crowded market is longevity. You can build momentum quickly, but the question is whether that growth is sustainable over the long term.
Tell me a little bit about the Rhode deal. How did it come together?
We have a platform that's really designed to support companies through every stage of their lifecycle — from that early growth stage to the ultimate exit. The Rhode transaction is a reflection of that.
We were able to support the company earlier through our commercial banking capabilities and act as a thought partner. Being able to work with a client over time and ultimately help navigate a strategic transaction is what makes the job so exciting and dynamic.
What drew you to the beauty sector in the first place?
I grew up going with my mom to the department store counters and got my first skincare regimen when I was probably too young to say — a preteen. It's always been a personal interest of mine.
Early in my career, it became increasingly clear that there was a huge opportunity in beauty given the rapid pace of deal activity happening across the category. Emerging brands in particular are an incredibly important part of the beauty ecosystem. Those founders need partners and advisors to help them navigate growth and assess opportunities in a sector that moves very quickly.
When I was a vice president, I saw an opportunity to form a sector specialty in beauty. My pitch to senior leadership was to invest early, and leverage our full platform to support these founders, leaders, and investors; be their thought partner; and earn their trust as they navigated those important strategic decisions, up to and including a potential sale process. Fortunately, this approach has proven successful.
For me, being able to work with companies over time and help them navigate those decisions is incredibly rewarding.