WWD Beauty Inc took a variety of sources into account to compile the 2025 Power Brands list, including our own reporting. For the 2025 iteration of this franchise, we also asked featured brands to provide sales, social media metrics and other quantifications of performance at their disposal.

Sales

For domestic sales across the mass and prestige markets, Circana provided the top 10 brands by category for skin care, hair care, makeup and fragrance, as well as the market overall, and the top share gainers in each. Globally, Euromonitor International contributed sales rankings across skin care, hair care, makeup and fragrance for 2024, and we also referenced the WWD Beauty Inc Top 100, an annual ranking of the biggest beauty companies. YipitData also contributed gross merchandise volume data for the 12 months ending May 2025.

Digital

Launchmetrics provided media impact value (MIV) data for the first quarter of 2025, which algorithmically evaluates media mentions. CreatorIQ provided EMV rankings across categories — a marketing metric that values social media engagement across platforms — for hair care, makeup, skin care and fragrance for the 12 months ending May 2025. Spate.NYC provided brands ranked by its proprietary Popularity Index, an aggregate of search traffic on Google and TikTok, year-over-year ending May 2025. Bestseller pages on Sephora. com and ulta.com illustrated top performers at retail.

Agility and Innovation

Our own reporting informed how impactful launches were evaluated. As for donations and philanthropic endeavors, companies provided their own figures.

Industry Awards and Recognition

The 2025 winners of the Fragrance Foundation Awards, 2024 Allure Best of Beauty Awards and the 2025 Marie Claire Prix d’Excellence also informed our compilation.