A Celebrity-Backed Self-Tanning Brand Just Raised $11 Million

Isabel Alysa Vita spent years driving to celebrities’ homes to give them a flawless tan before red carpet events. Now her brand, Dolce Glow, has landed an 11 million dollar Series A funding round led by Cavu Consumer Partners, with more than 10 celebrities and influencers joining as investors. It’s a striking milestone for a company that started as a single tanning artist’s side business. The round signals something bigger happening in the beauty industry too, where founder-led brands with a genuine personal story behind them are increasingly attracting serious investment dollars. Here’s how a mobile tanning service built entirely on word of mouth turned into one of the fastest-growing names in self tan.

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The Founder Behind the Formula

Vita founded Dolce Glow back in 2015, building her reputation as a go-to tanning artist for major celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez, and Katy Perry. That client list matters here in a very direct way. Rather than developing products in a lab first and marketing them afterward, Vita built her formulas and techniques through years of hands-on, in-person work applying tan directly onto some of the most photographed faces and bodies in the world. That real-world testing ground became the foundation for the at-home product line that eventually followed, giving the brand a level of applied expertise that’s genuinely difficult for a typical startup to replicate.

Why the Shift to At-Home Products Made Sense

Dolce Glow didn’t launch its at-home product range until 2021, six years after Vita first started her professional tanning business. That timing wasn’t accidental. Building a loyal, high-profile client base first gave the brand credibility and built in demand before it ever tried selling directly to everyday consumers. Once the at-home line did launch, it carried an implicit promise that resonated with shoppers, the same techniques used on celebrities before major events, now available for anyone to use in their own bathroom. That kind of translated expertise, moving from professional service to consumer product, has become an increasingly common and effective playbook across the beauty industry.

Breaking Down the Actual Funding Round

The newly announced Series A round raised 11 million dollars and represents Dolce Glow’s first institutional funding round, meaning its earlier growth had been financed entirely through an undisclosed amount raised from friends and family. That detail is worth noting, since it means the brand had already built meaningful traction and revenue before ever needing outside institutional capital. The company plans to direct the new funding toward several priorities, including expanding retail inventory, growing its brick-and-mortar distribution pipeline, accelerating product research and formulation, and building out its core corporate and marketing teams as it enters its next growth phase.

The Investment Firm Backing This Bet

Leading the round is Cavu Consumer Partners, a firm with a notable track record in the consumer products space, having previously backed buzzy brands including Poppi, Vital Proteins, and Whoop. That history matters, since Cavu has repeatedly shown an ability to identify smaller, founder-driven brands early and help scale them into recognizable, widely distributed names. A representative from Cavu described the sunless tanning category as one experiencing especially strong momentum right now, pointing to Dolce Glow’s clear product-market fit as a major factor behind the firm’s decision to lead this particular round.

A Roster of Celebrity Investors

Part of what makes this funding round especially notable is exactly who chose to put their own money behind it. Pop star Miley Cyrus, a longtime client of Vita’s, first took a stake in Dolce Glow back in 2023, marking her very first brand investment of any kind. This latest Series A round expanded that celebrity investor base considerably, adding names like Sofia Richie Grainge, Olivia Culpo, Jaclyn Hill, Brianna LaPaglia, and Ash Holm, along with several other celebrities and influencers. That kind of visible, personal financial buy-in from recognizable names tends to generate organic marketing value that a traditional advertising budget alone simply cannot replicate.

The Retail Milestone That Caught Investors’ Attention

Beyond its celebrity roster, Dolce Glow has posted genuinely impressive retail numbers that likely played a real role in attracting serious investment interest. The brand expanded into Ulta Beauty stores in 2024, followed by a launch in roughly 300 Sephora locations in 2026. Within just six months of that Sephora launch, Dolce Glow had become the retailer’s number one self-tanning brand, a remarkably fast climb in a competitive beauty category where shelf space and consumer loyalty are both notoriously difficult to win quickly.

What’s Actually Inside the Product Lineup

Dolce Glow’s current lineup includes self-tanning mists, mousses, serums, and a growing collection of hybrid tanning makeup products, all positioned as clean, vegan, and cruelty-free formulations with an Italian-inspired brand identity. Bestsellers include the 36 dollar Acqua Hydrating Face Mist and the 49 dollar Lusso Self-Tanning Mousse, alongside newer additions like the 28 dollar Gimme More Contour Self-Tanning Sculptor. That pricing places Dolce Glow solidly in the prestige tier of the tanning category, well above typical drugstore self-tanner pricing, reflecting the brand’s positioning around professional-grade results rather than budget convenience.

A Booming Category With Real Acquisition History

Dolce Glow’s funding round arrives amid genuine momentum across the broader sunless tanning industry. In 2023, consumer goods company Kao acquired the self-tanning brand Bondi Sands for a reported price of roughly 300 million dollars. Investment firm Yellow Wood Partners also acquired a majority stake in Future Beauty Labs, the parent company behind self-tanning brands Tan-Luxe, Isle of Paradise, and Tanologist, back in 2020. Additional deals in the category have also involved brands like Loving Tan and Vita Liberata, suggesting investors increasingly view sunless tanning as a durable, growing corner of the beauty industry rather than a passing trend.

What Comes Next for the Brand

Vita has been fairly direct about her ambitions going forward, describing a long-term goal of building Dolce Glow into a brand worth more than 100 million dollars while establishing clear category leadership. Notably, she reportedly had several other funding offers on the table before choosing Cavu, and maintaining meaningful control over her own company was a genuine priority throughout those negotiations, since some competing offers would have reduced her voting rights within the business. That decision reflects a broader pattern among founder-led beauty brands right now, where retaining creative and strategic control increasingly matters just as much to founders as the size of the check being offered.