LaLa Anthony Went to YouTube University, Then Started a Hair-Care Company

The year 2020 had a lot of us in our kitchens. Some of us were making sourdough bread — Lala Anthony was fermenting rice water. The lockdown gave the TV personality and actor a chance to slow down mentally. Once she did, she began to notice that her hair was starting to thin in some places, likely a result of all the different styles she’d been wearing. 

“It’s so easy for me to forget about my hair because I can use extensions, wigs, or braids for all these amazing hairstyles,” Anthony tells me over a Zoom call. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail with two chunky, wavy tendrils framing her face. “I realized that I wasn’t taking time to take care of my hair.” 

And with nothing but time on her hands, Anthony did what many of us have done in the past — enroll herself in YouTube University and start experimenting. There, she discovered a community of creators praising rice water for its supposed hair-regrowth benefits (more on that later). 

She followed the tutorials to make her own concoction: A few nights a week, she’d leave some rice in water overnight to ferment, then pour the water over her problem areas, near the front of her head. Anthony says she was pretty diligent about applying it, using a little bit every day. The problem? “After 24 hours when you ferment rice, the smell is horrific — you literally have to clear your whole house out,” she says. “It’s not sustainable.” 

After weeks of steady use, Anthony says she liked the results she was seeing so much, that she saw an opportunity to bring it to the world — without the smell, of course. “I got with some amazing chemists and put together what you have, which is the Power Potion.”

The Power Potion is the first (and right now, only) product in Anthony’s newly-minted Inala hair-care line. The lightweight serum contains ingredients like biotin, which as the National Institute of Health mentions, can help metabolize fatty acids and glucose so your body can use them for energy.  It also, most famously, can be helpful in creating an environment that promotes hair growth, though as Allure has previously reported, does not necessarily mean it helps you actually grow more hair. As New Jersey-based cosmetic chemist Ginger King notes, biotin is most effective when it’s ingested anyway. The elixir also contains protein-building amino acids like arginine and serine, as well as soy. Looking at the ingredient list, serine and biotin appear towards the beginning, meaning the formula has it in higher concentrations.