Meet the Founder: Scarlet on Plants, Ritual, and New Moon Oil

Where does the story of Coven Botanica begin?

Long before there was a business, there was a little girl growing up in Northern Virginia in the '90s. An only child spending most of her time alone in the woods behind our house, riding my bike, climbing trees, sometimes getting purposely lost just so I could find my way home again. That instinct, to explore, to challenge myself, and to trust I could find my way back, has never really left me.

What were you like as a kid?

While other kids ran lemonade stands, I ran a soup stand. In part because of practicality (Northern VA), but also because soup let me be creative. Whatever was in the fridge, no recipe, just a pot and whatever made sense to throw in there.  Along with soup, I enjoyed mixing up other concoctions. Most weekends I could be found kneeling on our yellow bathmat with mixing bowls lined up in front of me, spices, leaves, bark, whatever I felt called to combine. I was convinced that the right combination could make something stronger than any single ingredient on its own. That belief, that individual elements become more than themselves in relationship to each other,  is the same one Coven is built on today.

I was also drawn to ritual and the unseen: Tarot, astrology, Ouija boards, palmistry, spells, all the things! I was drawn to all of it long before I had language for what I was doing. Looking back, I think I was searching for connection. I often felt unsure of my place in the world, and ritual and imagination gave me a way of living that felt more true, more connected to something beyond myself.

How did beauty enter the picture?

I remember watching my mother get ready for bed, the smooth glide of a clay mask, the greenish blue one with the cool mint tingle. I started borrowing her products early on. But I was just as curious about the beauty rituals of women who came centuries before. I pored over library books on Cleopatra and Aphrodite, their milk-and-honey baths and olive oil moisturizers. I learned that the right combination of plants and intention could create something more potent than any single ingredient on its own.

And when did you start making your own skincare?

In college, my curiosity became personal. Severe acne kept me home, consumed by insecurity. I spent those nights studying Ayurveda and other traditional systems of medicine, searching for what conventional treatments never gave me. That search led me to change my major to Biology, hoping to better understand the body, fascinated that we inhabit this thing without an owner’s manual. I was also equally interested in how our bodies heal with the support of diet, nutrients, and herbal remedies, leading to a decade immersed in herbalism and nutrition. Across every tradition I studied, the same idea kept surfacing: what shows up on the skin is connected to what's happening inside and vice versa.  When a homemade jojoba oil blend and chickpea-and-turmeric face scrub actually worked, I was hooked. I wanted to keep learning and making.

How did your training as an herbalist deepen from there?

I spent two years interning with an herbalist. We would work with the seasons, gathering and drying plants, making salves and teas, and talking about the nature of each herb: not just what it did, but how it grew, where it belonged, and how it related to the plants around it. That curiosity eventually took me to permaculture farms in Costa Rica and Hawaii, where I spent years learning entirely new ecosystems of healing plants. I left with a new understanding of myself as part of nature, not separate from it, attuned to seasons, cycles, rest, and the pull of the moon.

When did you create New Moon Oil?

Five years ago, my son started struggling with acne, and I found myself asking the same questions that had started my own journey decades earlier; looking for the root cause, trying to see the whole picture, wanting to bring his skin back into balance without being invasive. At the same time I was dealing with hormonal acne as well as changing skin (“Hi 40’s!”). The search for something that could work on acne AND overall tone and texture, led me to neem, and to its extraordinary history as a healing plant. I wanted to create something that honored this plant in all its glory, not just its performance in a lab. What followed was two years spent refining our first product, New Moon Oil, a formula built in rhythm with the moon and shaped by the alchemy of its ingredients. Once we both started using it, the change was real.

Is there a central belief or guiding principle at the core of Coven Botanica?

My experience all these years taught me that a plant is more than the sum of its compounds. Its history, its mythology, how it has traditionally been used, the land it comes from, and the generations of people who have known and worked with it all matter,  just as much as what we can measure in a lab.

I’m also really interested in what happens when thoughtfully chosen ingredients are brought together with care. How botanicals can support one another, strengthen one another, and create more than they could on their own. I think the same is true of us.

That idea is at the heart of Coven: that we’re shaped by what we care for, what we come together around, and what we’re connected to.