Henna is surrounded by legends, beliefs, and millennia of use on the hair and skin. It is a powder made from the dried leaves of a flowering plant called Lawsonia inermis or henna tree.

It colours the hair with chocolate, brown and black hues when mixed with other ingredients such as henna, coffee or noni fruits.

It helps obtain a wider range of natural hair colouring than just the red of henna.

Discovered in 1916, the active colouring ingredient of henna is called lawsone. It reacts with keratin, the protein that makes the hair, providing a long-lasting dye that coats the entire hair shaft. Lawsone acts as a varnish, which explains why the result of a henna colouring depends on the hair colour it’s applied on. Where chemical dyes tend to damage the hair by breaking into it, changing its natural colour, henna and its coating effect help protect, condition and give a lot of shine.

Lush purchases red henna from a German company that sources the finest powder from the Sistan and Baluchestan province in Iran.