This Mother-Daughter Duo Founded a Global Beauty Brand Rooted in Being Filipino
Born from native soil, powered by women, and made to stand among the world’s best. Rosalina Tan and Mary Jane Tan-Ong made it possible.
By the time you finish reading the label on a bottle of Pili Ani, it’s already clear this isn’t your usual luxury skin-care brand, because behind the elegant packaging is an indigenous tree, two rare oils, and a deep-rooted mission to uplift the hands that harvest them.
Shaira Luna
But to understand the soul of the brand, you need to go back to a warehouse stacked with oils, a remote farm in Bicol, and two women—mother Rosalina Tan and daughter Mary Jane Tan-Ong—who refused to let the Filipino farmer be left behind.
“We started [Pili Ani] not as a business,” Rosalina says. “Just an advocacy to help the farmers. I just wanted [to raise] awareness that there are some benefits from the pili [tree], too.”
That advocacy quickly turned into something much bigger. When Rosalina discovered that farmers were selling resin from the native elemi tree to middlemen at a pittance, she intervened. “I said, oh, kawawa naman! It’s unfair. You’re paying them only 20 pesos per kilo,” she recalls. “So I bought it at a much, much higher price. From 20, I bought [it at] 100.”
Mary Jane saw something else: potential. “[My mother] was never in it for the business. She was really for giving back,” Mary Jane says. “But I told her, if you want to help them, you have to make it into a business. It has to be sustainable.”
That shift in mindset—treating advocacy not as charity, but as viable, equitable enterprise—became the seed for Pili Ani’s long-term impact. And at its root was a desire to rewrite the origin story of what Filipino luxury can look and feel like, starting with the source.
“Filipinos, in general, we’re not in that luxury category, especially in the beauty space,” says Mary Jane. At an influencer event, a well-known Hollywood esthetician approached her and said, “I love the Philippines. My nanny is from the Philippines.” At first, Mary Jane was taken aback. Are we only ever seen in service roles? she thought. But then she reframed it: “Her nanny was like family. Filipinos are very loving, very caring. So we put that same care into our products. That’s our strength. That’s how we level up globally.”
Shaira Luna
“Filipinos are very loving, very caring. So we put that same care into our products. That’s our strength. That’s how we level up globally.”
Luxury, for them, doesn’t mean opulence. It means integrity. “We don’t scrimp on active ingredients. We build clinically tested products that work,” Mary Jane says. That conviction is woven into Pili Ani’s entire philosophy: beauty as care, grounded in Filipino ingredients and Filipino knowledge. Nothing surface level.
But reshaping the narrative wasn’t just about what went into the bottle, it was also about where it landed first. “Here, people still prefer imported brands. Colonial mentality is still there,” Rosalina explains. So they launched in the U.S. first, not because they were looking outward, but because they needed to prove, on the world’s stage, that Filipino-made could meet—and exceed—global standards.
In a global market saturated with 13-product regimens and borrowed rituals, Rosalina stands firm in her belief that beauty doesn’t need embellishment. “Simple, simple, plain beauty,” she says. Mary Jane agrees, with a smile: “You know how Korean beauty now has almost a hundred million steps? With us, we just clean our face, add a dash of lip butter, maybe a pop of color on the eyes, and we’re good. For me, beauty is glowing from within. Just taking care [of ourselves], naturally, is beauty.”
Shaira Luna
And that’s what Pili Ani offers the world: not just skin care, but proof that simplicity is powerful enough. In an industry driven by excess, their confidence in uniquely Filipino ingredients, and the hands that nurture and harvest them, challenges everything the West taught us to believe. Pili Ani stands out with beauty that’s proudly rooted in being Filipino.
Makeup and grooming: Lala Flores and Emman Magpantay. Hair: Cats Del Rosario and JA Feliciano. Styling: Joy Bernardo and Jolo Bayoneta of StyLIZed Studio. Mary Jane Tan-Ong: Lulu Tan Gan Pina Blouse. Carolina Herrera Poplin Straight Leg Pants. Tiffany & Co. Gold Hardware Earrings. Rosalina Tan: Carolina Herrera Flowery Print Chine Long Dress With Cufflinks.
