Meet the entrepreneur who is on a mission to help people with burns and scars feel more confident

The group develops and delivers professional beauty training, treatments and products, including permanent makeup, medical tattooing and skin therapies.

Using these products, Ms Betts has made it her mission to help people living with burns and scars feel more confident about themselves.

Nouveau HD Beauty Group, which has a £10.7m turnover and employs 140 people, was sold to US-based Nexus Brands Group in 2021 but Ms Betts remains at the helm.

To date, 50,000 people have been trained nationwide in Ms Betts’ permanent make-up treatments, including HD brows and Nouveau Lashes.

"We know there are lots of salons where customers aren’t coming in as often because they can’t afford it so we’ve been looking at how we can help them survive,” she told The Yorkshire Post.

"The average value within our training academy is also 10 per cent lower than it was so we’ve had to get creative.”

The company has spent the last 18 months building an online shop, which Ms Betts describes as a ‘Look Fantastic for beauty professionals’, which will be launched at the end of March.

"We specialise in brows, lashes and permanent make-up but we realised that a lot of the salons we work with probably need to add different things to their treatment menu if their customers are having their regular treatments further apart to save money,” she said. “Our platform will also be a training platform for lots of different brands.”

As well as the product and training company, Ms Betts also owns three salons under her own name – based in South Elmsall, London’s Harley Street, and Cheshire, which are targeted at very affluent customers.

“My clients aren’t as affected by the cost of living crisis,” she added. “They book their next treatment before they leave so there hasn’t been that drop off on that side of the business.”

Ms Betts’ entrepreneurial journey began in the 1990s when her friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and, following treatment, confided in her that she no longer felt confident with her appearance due to the loss of her brows.

Ms Betts, a beauty therapist, researched tattooing as a way to help her and, realising that nobody in the UK offered cosmetic tattooing, she travelled to the US to train.

She went on to set up her first clinic and it wasn’t long before her treatments were in high demand, including medical tattooing for scarring, post cancer hair loss and post breast cancer treatments.

Ms Betts later launched her training academy to broaden the accessibility of these treatments by giving aspiring artists the chance to do the same work.

The company, which has developed about 3,000 products over the years, is about to launch its latest set of pigments, which are compliant with the new EU REACH regulations that restrict the use of certain harmful chemicals.

Ms Betts is bullish about the year ahead despite the economic challenges. “We’re looking at how we can be lean but also innovate,” she said. “We’re quite excited about the end of the year. For us to have profited more than we expected is my little challenge.”