Inside Jessica Alba’s Net Worth After Leaving the Honest Company
Actor Jessica Alba initially felt like an imposter when she ran the Honest company. But she proved herself wrong since, thanks to her ideas, she helped her organization become a billion-dollar corporation at its peak. The company’s success was once rumored to increase her net worth substantially. But did her departure from the company have the opposite effect on her finances?
How Jessica Alba’s net worth was affected by her Honest company
Alba’s Honest company came a long way after she first conceived the idea in 2008. She was inspired to start the brand thanks to an allergic reaction she had to a product she purchased online. She started doing research on similar products, and realized there was a hole in the market when it came to the kinds of goods she was looking for.
“I found out there are a lot of potentially harmful chemicals in everyday products, from laundry detergent to beauty products to personal care products. There really wasn’t rigor in the same way around testing products for safety before they’re brought into the marketplace the way there is in Europe,” she once told Teen Vogue. “In personal care alone in Europe, there were over 1,200 banned chemicals because they didn’t prove safe. Whereas at the time in the U.S., there were about 9 banned chemicals.”
Dissatisfied with the available options in the country, Alba decided to create the goods she needed herself and share them with others. This also gave her the opportunity to deliver grounded lifestyle advice to customers to make more responsible purchases. Alba launched Honest company in 2012, which was named after her daughter, Honor. By 2016, Honest was worth $1.7 billion, and Forbes initially estimated that Alba had a net worth of $340 million because of her stake in the company. Things were going so well for Alba that she briefly considered leaving acting altogether to focus on her entrepreneurial career. However, it was noted that Honest endured a lot of turbulence when it was supposed to be at the top of its game.
A couple of customers sued Honest after claiming their bodies had adverse reactions to Honest’s products. The company would part ways with an undisclosed sum of money by settling these cases out of court. Declining sales also gradually started to hurt Honest over the years, and it was noted that the company never reached or surpassed its 2016 success.
In 2024, Alba stepped down from Honest to pursue other creative endeavors. Celebrity net worth claims she has a net worth of $100 million, with a good chunk of her earnings stemming from her tenure at Honest.
Why Jessica Alba’s priorities shifted away from Honest
It wasn’t easy for Alba to leave behind something that she created. But she felt the business was in need of new direction that no longer aligned with her own views.
“When I realized that the business really needed the more kind of streamlined flow, and not the visionary flow, I had to start thinking about what that meant for my role, and it took me a hot minute to get there,” Alba said in an interview on Trevor Noah’s What? Now podcast . “I needed to leave it in hands that I knew it would be safe and with the right team.”
The Dark Angel star also compared letting Honest go to raising a child that grew out of the household.
“It’s sad because, yeah, it’s a part of me. It’s a child. So I even like thinking about my kids all of my kids’ first day of kindergarten, I wept. You know? It’s like it’s a milestone. I don’t think it’s ever easy,” she said.
But perhaps one of the biggest challenges of leaving Honest was having to adjust to her new life without it. Alba asserted she was always wondering what her purpose in life was ever since she was young. She was forced to face that question again when stepping down from her company.
“I questioned that since I was probably 3 or 4,” she said. “I would say, ‘What’s my point?’ to my parents? Like, ‘What’s the point of this?’ And I think I’ve sometimes, maybe my point or our point is to just, I don’t know, sit in stillness and, like, breathe. I’m learning how to do that.”
