Roughly 15.5 million US adults have an ADHD diagnosis, and 5.4 million adults have one for autism. However, ADHDers assigned female at birth are typically diagnosed five years later than men, while 80% of autistic women remain undiagnosed by age 18.
Over the last decade, awareness of neurodivergence has grown. “Neurodivergent” is an umbrella term coined in the 1990s to describe anyone whose brain or nervous system differs from what is considered neurotypical. Autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, PTSD, and psychosis are all examples, as is AuDHD, the co-occurrence of both autism and ADHD that until 2013 was not diagnostically possible. Since then, medical systems in both the US and the UK have been inundated with diagnosis and treatment requests they cannot handle, leaving many looking for solutions to ease symptoms.
In beauty, this growing cohort of consumers is often overlooked. This is unsurprising, given that the beauty and wellness industries have a history of exacerbating ableist expectations around productivity, discipline, and appearing “well.”
“Before [my own autism] diagnosis, my self-care routine was actually not really self-care at all,” Dr. Rebecca Evanko, a researcher and clinical mental health counselor specializing in autism in adult women, told BeautyMatter. “It was more a performance, striving to be competent,” she said.
Dr. Samantha Hiew, AuDHDer and founder of the ADHD Girls platform and global community, told BeautyMatter that a product can be technically accessible yet still cognitively exhausting or sensory-overwhelming to use. “There’s still a huge gap between physical accessibility and what I’d call ‘nervous system accessibility,’ she said, referring to sensory and cognitive barriers like fragrance or texture. “Many beauty and self-care experiences are unintentionally designed in ways that create friction rather than ease,” Hiew added.
Brands have made progress in physical accessibility, from Estée Lauder's voice-enabled makeup assistant to L'Oréal's HAPTA adaptive lipstick applicator. But neuroinclusive beauty was usually left out of the conversation until this June, when Sephora rolled out its Quiet Hours initiative globally to make the retail experience less stimulating for highly responsive nervous systems.
Is the industry starting to address the cognitive and sensory accessibility gap?
The question is whether brands can, and will, design routines that accommodate fluctuating attention, sensory sensitivity, and executive-function challenges, as well as the specific mental, menstrual, and menopausal effects experienced by autistic people, ADHDers, and AuDHDers with a uterus.
Millie Flemington-Clare, founder and CEO of Human Beauty and Certified Accessible, told BeautyMatter that focusing on visible disability is a trend across the industry. “If brands creating adaptive technology or specific adaptive/accessible product lines aren't also doing the groundwork to make the very small, simple changes—what I refer to as incremental innovation, that can make every product more accessible—then it's an active choice to leave out the majority,” she said, referring to customers who’d benefit from those changes, disabled or not. Flemington-Clare believes they end up feeling more like marketing ploys and less genuine advancement. “Especially in the context of innovation like HAPTA, if the device could be universal and used for all lipstick brands, it would've felt slightly less exploitative,” she added.
One-fifth of Americans identify as neurodivergent, one in four live with a disability, and according to Mintel, three in four US consumers want to see greater representation of disabled people in beauty.
In 2025, the British Beauty Council’s A Beauty Industry That Looks Like You report uncovered that 20% of people working in the beauty industry are neurodivergent—4% higher than the national average. Flemington-Clare is currently working with the council as a strategic partner on its neurodivergence and disability three-year pathway, helping create a new standard and a trusted source of information. She is also building a certification program called Certified Accessible to “celebrate the brands already getting it right, and help brands get it right from the beginning,” she said.
Hiew believes beauty brands miss the mark on design and production inclusivity. “[They] still often design around an imagined customer with endless energy, executive function, and sensory tolerance, and that misses the reality for many neurodivergent women,” she said.
For example, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) affects roughly 3%-8% of menstruating women, but emerging data from the international journal Women’s Health suggests it is far more prevalent among the neurodivergent community: studies suggest that the number is 45%-46% for ADHDers, while another found it to be up to 92% for autistic women.
Research also found that perimenopause brings compounding emotional, cognitive, and physical challenges for female ADHDers, while one study discovered earlier onset compared to neurotypical women. Further research also confirms women with ADHD show greater menopausal symptom severity than their non-ADHD counterparts, and in August 2026, researchers declared that the autistic menopause experience is a hugely overlooked gap in women’s health.
All this demonstrates that the beauty industry’s increasing fixation on hormone health may be overlooking consumers who may need it the most.
From the UK’s disabled-owned cosmetics brand Human Beauty to the US’s autistic-founded lip brand Beauty By Jenna, more disability-focused and neuro-inclusive brands are launching to fill the beauty industry’s gap.
Retail therapy can lose its appeal for those with a neuro-spicy brain or highly sensitive nervous system. In fact, Clear Channel’s 2024 diversity and inclusion report found that 61% of shoppers with sensory sensitivities will leave if a store is busy, 46% will leave if the music is loud, and 37% say that fluorescent lighting is a flat-out no.
Hiew states that overpowering fragrance, sticky textures, visually cluttered packaging, unclear instructions, too many product choices, complicated routines, and inconsistent formulations can all become barriers for neurodivergent people. Flemington-Clare believes fragrance (both in products and experiential retail) is the biggest issue: “It seems to be in everything. A lot of premium beauty brands are the worst for this, as fragrance is almost a signature—and this excludes a lot of neurodivergent and disabled people,” she said before referencing a study that found 27.8% of UK adults report adverse health effects, including migraines, asthma attacks, and other breathing problems from fragranced products, to demonstrate how neuro-inclusive design benefits everyone.
“Brands could make a real difference through clearer labeling, sensory information on packaging, simpler routines, calmer visual design, more transparent communication, and products that reduce cognitive load instead of adding to it,” Hiew said.
Evanko, a developer of the WRADIANCE assessment instrument, which is used to diagnose autism in adult women, explained that these customers do not need simplification: “They need honesty and straightforward explanation about products that speak to their sensory needs.… The autistic women who came through our research, nearly a thousand of them, know exactly what bothers them, but nobody seems to ask what it is." Asking seems like a natural first step.
Quiet hours are another approach. When Sephora launched its initiative, it joined beauty retailers like Lush, Selfridges, and Superdrug in the UK, which have already implemented it across their stores. The next step is to design with neurodivergent beauty consumers from ideation to creation. For Flemington-Clare, working with disabled experts is key to creating a truly neuro-inclusive beauty industry: “Having disabled people at the center of it, and not [treating] accessible design as niche but something beneficial to all customers,” she said.
“I think there’s a real opportunity for brands to move away from the idea that beauty needs to be high-effort or overstimulating to feel aspirational,” Hiew said. “A lot of neurodivergent women are simply looking for experiences that feel predictable, supportive, and easier to engage with consistently.”
Beauty trend forecasters note shifts on the horizon that may already cater to this consumer base. Some point to the emergence of “ASMR beauty” as a hint that the industry’s future is multisensory. Others suggest “skintertainment,” the term given to playfully yet purposefully tactile products and packaging, will become beauty’s next significant shift as a counter-reaction to its current focus on functionality and rigid routines. Meanwhile, nervous system–soothing beauty is already trending in 2026.
Flemington-Clare acknowledges that cancel culture can cause brands to be scared to get something wrong when dealing with disabilities, but doing nothing, she said, is much, much worse.
