Terri Henry-Lovell had a lifelong passion for natural wellness and a newfound obsession with bees. She combined them, started with a lip balm nobody asked for, and built one of the Caribbean’s most decorated handmade skincare brands entirely by hand.
Key Takeaways
- Henry-Lovell Built the Brand From Skills She Had Been Developing Her Entire Life
- Bee Natural Has Won More Than 10 Awards and Grants Since 2021. Each One Stacked on the Last.
- She Met Her Husband Through a Beeswax Transaction. He Now Supplies Her Raw Materials and Has a Master Beekeeper Degree From the University of Florida.
- Bee Natural Is in 7 Islands and Getting There Requires Suitcases, Boats, and a Programme Called Space in Your Case.
- Henry-Lovell Has One Thing to Say to Every Caribbean Founder Staring at a Blank Sheet of Paper
- Terri Henry-Lovell founded Bee Natural in Dominica in 2018, starting with a single lip balm made from beeswax she sourced from a local beekeeper, and growing into a full line of clinically tested wellness products built entirely from hive ingredients.
- Bee Natural has won more than 10 awards and grants since 2021, including the CARICOM MicroPitch Award for Most Sustainable Entrepreneur in the OECS, National Agro-processor of the Year at the FAO World Food Day, and multiple grants from Caribbean Export and the Caribbean Development Bank.
- The brand now distributes across 7 Caribbean islands, co-brands with hotels and banks, and runs Garden Bee Tours for schools and visitors — all operated by a team of three, including Terri’s daughter Keeyah and her husband Nathaniel, the beekeeper she met through a beeswax transaction and married in 2024.
The first lip balm packaging was not pretty.
Generic containers from Amazon. Handmade labels. Packaging that Terri Henry-Lovell herself describes as awful. But the product inside the container worked. People bought it. They came back for more. And the feedback from those first customers small, specific, consistent gave her the confidence to keep going.
That is where Bee Natural began. Not with a business plan. Not with capital. With a lip balm that worked and customers who told her so.
Six years later, Bee Natural is a multi-award-winning skincare brand in 7 Caribbean islands, recognised by the FAO, the OECS, Caribbean Export, and the Caribbean Development Bank. A team of three. A clinically tested product line. A founder who has never outsourced a single formulation to anyone except the bees.
Henry-Lovell Built the Brand From Skills She Had Been Developing Her Entire Life
Terri Henry-Lovell is a former massage therapist and nature therapy guide. She had spent years working across tourism establishments in Dominica and leading experiences in the forest — helping people reconnect with themselves through nature. She had always made natural products for herself and her children. Natural wellness was not a pivot. It was the foundation.
When Hurricane Maria hit Dominica in 2017 and stripped the island’s forests, her service-based work became non-viable overnight. She used the reset as an opportunity to consolidate everything she already knew into something she could build and sell.
In 2018, she started formulating. She found a local beekeeper, sourced some beeswax, and began working with ingredients from the hive. The lip balm came first. The deodorant came next, and it was a different kind of challenge entirely.
“I have tear stains in my formulation book. Every time I’d make a batch and something wouldn’t go right, and the ingredients were very expensive.”
She went through formulation after formulation before landing on a recipe that worked.
Most natural deodorants use baking soda sodium bicarbonate because it alters the pH of the underarm environment, making it harder for odour-causing bacteria to thrive. The problem is that the resulting pH is not what skin is designed to handle. Over time, baking soda deodorants cause rashes and irritation, particularly in the underarm, which is thin-skinned, sensitive, and sits directly next to breast tissue.
Terri will not use it.
She developed a formula using gentler, skin-safe ingredients that allow the body to sweat naturally a necessary biological function while eliminating odour without disrupting the skin’s pH. When she had a formula she trusted, she had it clinically assessed. The Bee Natural deodorant range is now 7 variants, all clinically tested and certified. That distinction matters on a pharmacy shelf next to mass-produced alternatives that carry no such verification. It is Bee Natural’s top seller, locally and across every export market.
She came up with the name the same way she came up with everything else. Everything she was making came from the hive. Bee Natural was the only name that made sense.
Bee Natural Has Won More Than 10 Awards and Grants Since 2021. Each One Stacked on the Last.
The awards did not arrive because Terri was chasing them. They arrived because she was building something real.
The first grant meeting she attended, she went home empty-handed.
“I had nothing. I was just beginning, keeping things on scraps of paper, mixing up finances. I did not come to this as a qualified business person.”
The meeting required two years of financial records. She went home and started keeping proper accounts. That discipline, forced by a grant she did not get, became the foundation for every award that followed.
In 2021: Caribbean Export Technical Assistance Programme Grant. In 2022: Nature Isle Beekeepers Project trainee and awardee. Then 2023 arrived and the recognition accelerated. CARICOM MicroPitch Award for Most Sustainable Entrepreneur in the OECS. Gems Foundation Entrepreneur Pitch Challenge. Flow Inknowvation Award. First runner up at the NDFD Green Innovations Summit. National Agro-processor of the Year at the FAO World Food Day. At the OECS Honey Show: Best Commercial Product, Best Beeswax Candle, Best Photography.
In 2024: Outstanding Contribution to Agro Processing Award, Global Green Growth Institute Caribbean Accelerator Loan, Digital Transformation Grant, and the Caribbean Development Bank’s SheTrades programme.
“Every time we win a grant, we make an upgrade. We always make an upgrade.”
One grant funded a machine that improved production capacity by 200%. Another funded beekeeping equipment for the school tour program. Each award built on the credibility of the last. That is not luck. That is compound interest.
She Met Her Husband Through a Beeswax Transaction. He Now Supplies Her Raw Materials and Has a Master Beekeeper Degree From the University of Florida.
In 2022, Terri completed her beekeeping training and received contact details for a local beekeeper. She called him to buy beeswax.
Nathaniel Lovell arrived with the wax. She gave him deodorant. He helped her move a nucleus colony to a larger hive on World Bee Day. They made a video together. They kept going.
“Two bee nerds that like to talk about bees a lot. At least we get to listen to each other go on about bees.”
They married in May 2024. Nathaniel, founder of the award-winning La Vie Miel Honey brand, now supplies much of Bee Natural’s beeswax and recently completed his master beekeeper programme at the University of Florida. When production days run long, he labels until late. When she needs help at harvest, she and her production assistant go and work his hives.
The beeswax Nathaniel supplies carries a specific advantage that most coverage of Bee Natural has never explained. Dominica’s bee population remains tolerant against Varroa Destructor Mites — the parasitic mite that has devastated commercial bee colonies worldwide and forced most large-scale beekeepers to treat their hives with chemical miticides. Dominica’s hives are treatment-free and largely wild. That means the beeswax going into every Bee Natural product is free from the pesticide residues that contaminate the majority of commercially available beeswax globally. When Terri says the products are natural, she means it at the source level, not just in the formulation.
Keeyah, Terri’s daughter, has been in the business since she was ten — labeling, explaining products, watching from the inside. She just finished college and joined full time. Junica, the production assistant, recently reached the milestone Terri had been working toward.
“That was the first time I have let go and not been hands on. This has been a major milestone, a major leap in the business.”
Terri went on vacation. Junica made the batches correctly. The business kept running.
Bee Natural Is in 7 Islands and Getting There Requires Suitcases, Boats, and a Programme Called Space in Your Case.
Bee Natural currently distributes across Dominica, Barbados, Antigua, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Kitts, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. The logistics are different for every island and none of them are simple.
Dominica does not have a functioning post office. International couriers charge fees that can run to five times the cost of the product. Shopify fulfilment is not a viable option. So Terri built a programme she calls Space in Your Case — reaching out to travelers to ask if they can carry a small package between islands. An envelope of products fits easily. The traveler gets a product as a thank-you.
“This is the reality of a small island. The things that others would consider basic is just not part of our reality.”
Hotels, gift shops, and banks approach Bee Natural through customer demand. Co-branded products for hotels and financial institutions add complexity different labels, separate production runs inside a very small operation. Terri recently made a spreadsheet listing every role the business requires. There were 33. She had been covering 31 herself.
The Garden Bee Tour program runs alongside the retail business — paid tours for visitors, free sessions for schools. Children arrive thinking bees only sting. They leave knowing about pollination, ecosystem health, and food security.
Henry-Lovell Has One Thing to Say to Every Caribbean Founder Staring at a Blank Sheet of Paper
Building Bee Natural has cost Terri sleep, time with people she loves, and the ability to switch off. She does not pretend otherwise.
“Entrepreneurship looks nice from the outside. Please don’t get into this if you think you’re just going to get an easy road. It’s all and everything and you’re constantly bumping against the system.”
She says it without bitterness. She says it because she believes founders deserve the truth before they start, not after they are already in the middle of it.
What she also knows is this: every machine that a grant paid for is still running. Every island that stocked the products for the first time is still stocking them. Every customer who messaged to say Bee Natural’s deodorant was the first one they could ever use without a rash — those messages are still coming in.
“If you’ve already built something once, you’re never really starting over. You’re already starting from a foundation of knowledge and skills and abilities. Life throws us curveballs constantly. It’s about constantly overcoming those obstacles and having just that determination. Like it’s a fire.”
The five-year plan: a dedicated production facility, deeper regional distribution, a shipping solution that does not require a suitcase. Jamaica is on the list.
“I would love the product to be in Jamaica. That is a dream that I have to make a reality one day.”
Check out the full conversation on YouTube, Spotify or Apple.
Bee Natural: beenatural.store | Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube: @beenaturalbalm
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Stephen Stanberry
