Sara is an inspiring and extraordinary henna artist based in Hong Kong. A talented young female with a creative, artistic mind and swift, precise fingers, She handles her very own Henna business, and promotes the art of Henna as well as other aspects of the Pakistani culture, abroad.

Sara has been attached to Henna Art since her childhood, a time when she used to watch her mother apply Henna for brides on their special occasion. Having always loved drawing and sketching and being good at it, one day, she just started doodling with a Henna cone instead of a pencil. It never occurred to the 6 year old girl who had just found a new hobby that in the future, this would become a full fledge business. Today, Sara’s Henna is known all across Hong Kong, because Sara, a dedicated soul, decided to go with the flow, and see where things lead her, grabbing every opportunity on the way.

‘Sara’s Henna’ was born in Hong Kong! In Pakistan, every other lady calls herself a henna artist, or in other words, a ‘mehndi-wali’. Sarah believes that in Pakistan, Henna Art is highly underrated and people look at it just as a way of decorating their hands and nothing else. She, thus, started her business in Hong Kong, a country where this art form was new and where people would understand fully it’s power and potential.

Talking about how exactly her business took off, Sara told us that ‘Sara’s Henna’ started on a whim at Hong Kong’s first ever handmade arts and crafts outdoor market, four years ago. “I got a small table/ booth and I sat there on my own with 6 henna cones and nothing else. My idea was to just henna people and introduce this beautiful traditional art form to Hong Kong. To this day, that’s the first and foremost aim of my business.” She also goes on to mention that she has a great network of entrepreneurial women in Hong Kong who encouraged her to take the giant leap and convert her hobby into a business. Social media, Facebook in particular, helped immensely in spreading the word about Sara’s Henna and is crucial to the expansion and management of the business even to this day.

Sara attributes a large part of her success, and the ease with which she managed to establish herself, to luck. “I think I was very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time, with a novelty service, and a tool and talent that required no financial support.” The only hurdle she encountered was her inability to speak the local language of Hong Kong. This made communication with the customers hard, but she still managed very well.

She mentions that during tough times her family and friends were a source of great comfort and support for her. Sara speaks passionately about her mother and the beautiful bond they share, despite their occasional disagreements. She admits that it was extremely hard to get her mother on board with the idea of her running a henna business. “At first she didn’t agree with my business. Being a religious woman, she didn’t like me using the human body as a canvas for my henna art. Now however, she has come to understand that this is what I love and what i am passionate about. She now supports me fully in my business, but never holds back in keeping me grounded, for which, I am grateful to her. She is the sole reason I have never let my success get to my head. She has always told me, ‘the minute you start to think of yourself as somebody or have any kind of ego about yourself or your work, it will all disappear, and you will be left with nothing’.”

We then talked to Sara about the henna designs themselves. She says that she is a nature-lover and finds inspiration in natural beauty present all around her, be it in the form of clouds floating in the sky, seashells that get washed ashore or even a spider web. She hates sketching designs out on paper before she tattoos them on the body. She enjoys her ideas flowing directly onto the skin, in the form of Henna, and take shape spontaneously. She only sketches her ideas and gets them approved beforehand when she has to do Henna for brides on their important day.

Apart from henna art being used for decoration of the body, Sara saw it as a tool for change, a tool that could create magic and happiness. Her project, anatomical Henna is extremely unique, one that Sara has found to be the most exciting to date. It is the portrayal of anatomy by embedding anatomical codes in beautiful henna patterns. These make learning easy and more interesting for university students.

“The pretty designs are merely just a distraction. It is those few minutes shared with a stranger while doing their henna tattoo that are important. My henna is used to tell stories, to make a young girl undergoing chemotherapy feel confidant and special, to make a pregnant woman feel beautiful.” When asked to describe a particularly memorable incident to us, Sara recounted the story of her visit to the Children’s Cancer Hospital in Karachi at their Eid carnival where, she tattooed a Henna crown to a young patients head. “Maryam stole my heart with the beaming smile she rewarded me with when she saw her glittery henna-ed head. She felt and looked like a princess and the doctors told me that she had never looked happier than she did while she was twirling around proudly, showing off her baldhead with her henna crown. I’ve not forgotten her beautiful smile to this day.”