How Eleanor Pendleton Turned Her Heritage Into Haléau’s Glow Balm

In 2025, beauty can feel like it’s moving at warp speed. Newness drops daily, TikTok sells out products overnight, and sustainability has become more tagline than truth. Cutting through the noise isn’t easy, unless you’re Eleanor Pendleton.

After almost two decades as one of Australia’s most respected beauty editors, Pendleton is stepping onto the founder side with Haléau, a skin-first, slow-beauty brand three years in the making. Its debut product, the Pearl Baume Illuminating Highlighter, launches October 1 exclusively at haleaubeauty.com.

Part highlighter, part skincare, the balm is refillable, luminous, and made in Australia. But more than that, it’s personal. Pendleton grew up across from a pearl farm on the NSW Central Coast, and in Filipino culture — her mother’s heritage — pearls symbolise resilience and femininity. “That symbolism has stayed with me,” she says.

Pendleton has been telling beauty stories for almost 18 years, across titles like Harper’s BAZAAR, InStyle, her own Gritty Pretty, and even Refinery29. She’s interviewed founders, tested thousands of products, and watched countless brands rise and fall. But at a certain point, critiquing from the sidelines wasn’t enough.

“I felt a pull to create something of my own,” she says. “Not just to talk about the industry from the outside, but to build from within it — to craft objects of beauty that marry performance with meaning. Haléau is the culmination of years of listening, learning and dreaming,” Pendleton explains the journey wasn’t seamless. “There were nights at my kitchen table after putting my babies to sleep, buried in Pantone swatches and production invoices, wondering if I was out of my depth,” she admits. “Constant manufacturing delays, cost blowouts, moments of doubt, they all came. What kept me going was the North Star: the Pearl Baume itself.”

Pearls aren’t just branding. Micronised pearl powder is the backbone of every Haléau formula. Revered in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries, modern research supports its cosmetic benefits: brightening, smoothing, and supporting natural collagen production.

“I love that pearl powder doesn’t just create an instant glow — it also works over time to strengthen and revitalise skin,” Pendleton explains. “For Haléau, it felt like the perfect marriage of meaning and measurable benefit: an ingredient that embodies resilience and radiance, both symbolically and scientifically.”

Sustainability was non-negotiable. The pearl powder is a by-product of the industry, sourced from farms where oysters are cared for and ecosystems protected. “The powder comes from oysters that have already completed their natural cycle,” Pendleton says. “It’s renewable, traceable and respectful of the ocean that produces it.”

So why start with a highlighter balm? “Highlighter is often thought of as the finishing touch, but for me, radiance belongs at the start,” Pendleton says. “Launching with a balm allowed me to lean into the refillable compact design, which I see as a modern keepsake people will treasure. It was less about following category convention and more about creating a product that could introduce Haléau’s DNA in one small, powerful gesture.”

The result: a sheer, buildable balm that melts into skin with a warm, glassy glow. “It’s not glittery; it’s not metallic. It adapts beautifully across undertones and complexions, from fair to olive to deep,” Pendleton explains. The formula is enriched with skin-first actives including Bakuchiol, a plant-based retinol alternative that helps encourage cell renewal without irritation. Kakadu Plum, an Australian ingredient which is infact the world’s richest source of Vitamin C, while rosehip, jojoba, shea butter and squalane nourish and support elasticity.

Pendleton is careful not to overpromise. “Makeup should perform first as makeup,” she says. “But Pearl Baume delivers genuine benefits over time. While the immediate effect is glow, the long-term effect is softer, smoother, more resilient skin.”

If the formula is the soul, the packaging is the body. Haléau’s refillable compact looks and feels like a sculptural object: weighty, curved, designed to last. “I obsessed over details most people wouldn’t notice but would instinctively feel: the snap of the clasp, the smoothness of the curves, the angle of the hinge when opened,” Pendleton says. It took nearly two years, working with an industrial designer and engineer, to perfect. The compact retails at $120 AUD, with refills at $90. Price point aside, Pendleton views it as a manifestation of slow beauty. “We’re not trying to replicate what’s already out there at a cheaper price point,” she says. “We’re creating something original, intentional, and enduring. The compact is not packaging to be tossed away — it’s a keepsake.”

Haléau has also partnered with Plastic Bank and Take 3 For The Sea. For every compact purchased, the equivalent of one plastic bottle is removed from the ocean. “It was important to me that this wasn’t just a nice idea on paper but something transparent, accountable, and genuinely restorative,” Pendleton says.

If there’s one thing Pendleton has learned from watching other brands, it’s that hype fades. Longevity comes from authenticity and quality. “The brands with staying power are the ones with a clear point of view and a deep, genuine respect for their community,” she says. “I would rather build steadily and intentionally than chase fast growth and burn out.”

That’s why Haléau is launching direct-to-consumer, with no wholesale or retail middlemen. Pendleton has even documented the journey via Haléau’s Substack, Open Book. “Direct-to-consumer felt like the most honest way to begin,” she says. “By the end of the first year, success will look like a loyal core of customers who not only love the Pearl Baume but also believe in the values behind Haléau.”

If Pendleton could banish one beauty belief? That makeup must cover in order to be effective. “We’re well past that,” she says. “Beauty today is about enhancing, not hiding. Makeup should work with your skin, not against it.” Her own edit of staples reflects that philosophy. Think Merit’s Minimalist Stick, Biologique Recherche P50V, Emma Lewisham’s Reset Serum, Ultra Violette’s Queen Screen SPF, and the cult Weleda Skin Food Light Cream. “I’m loyal to products that I know perform,” she says, a category where Haléau clearly intends to join the ranks.

Haléau is launching into a crowded market, but Pendleton is betting on restraint: fewer, better products, made in Australia with transparency and intention. The Pearl Baume is her opening statement, a luminous balm that honours both skin and planet, wrapped in a compact designed to be treasured. For Pendleton, it’s not just glow for the sake of glow. It’s radiance rooted in resilience, heritage, and the slow beauty of pearls themselves. “Haléau is proof that beauty can be both radiant and responsible,” she says. And in an industry that’s often chasing the next viral moment, that might just be its brightest light.