Sarah Harbon

As the General Manager for the UK’s No 1 Premium Cosmetics brand, Benefit Cosmetic’s Sarah Harbon leads an agile, market leading business across many disciplines, across many channels, all with one common goal, making women feel great by proving out time and time again that Laughter is the Best Cosmetic. Leading a high performing business like this involves equal focus on performance, and a conscious effort to ensure teams are best positioned to meet the needs of our customers and ensure they have the best experience possible with us every time. Challenging times require very mindful leadership. Nowhere is this more evident than on the UK high street today, in an ever-changing landscape and evolving customer behaviours.



Since its arrival to the UK over 20 years ago, Benefit Cosmetics has been quick to predict and prepare for emerging retail trends and localised consumer behaviours. Agile, consumer centric brands have strong leadership, and Sarah has led many first to market initiatives responsible for the market domination that Benefit Cosmetics enjoys.



Benefit Cosmetics' very different and often disruptive approach was the first to offer a fresh alternative to the traditional premium beauty business model in many senses - from not doing any traditional above-the-line print or TV advertising to being the first beauty brand to truly embrace the digital world.



Sarah would be the first to say that the success of Benefit Cosmetics comes down to finding great people who share her passion and bring their own personalities and skills to the show. The business has always had a ‘family’ feel believing that anyone working with Benefit should feel they're part of something special and that hard work and fun should come in equal measure. With its unique DNA, and strapline, "Laughter is the Best Cosmetic”, everyone at Benefit is rich with opportunities to break rules with wit and wisdom.