A mother, a daughter,
and 8,500 kilometres
She is in Medellín, in her consulting room. I am in Paris, at my desk. Between us lie an ocean, six hours of time difference, and a company we have been running together for almost ten years.
This story begins with a question women kept asking my mother in consultation. They came for their skin, and then, on their way out, hand already on the door handle, they turned round: doctor, and my white hair, what do I do?
They still ask it today. Every week. That question, repeated over years, is what eventually became Affrenchy.
Dr Maritza Flórez Ruiz
My mother has been treating skin and hair for twenty-two years. When she talks to you about your hair fibre, she knows precisely what she is talking about.
She is a dermatologist, trained at the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada. For twelve years she headed the dermatology department of the Naval Hospital of Cartagena, treating children, adults, tropical diseases and clinical situations many practitioners rarely meet in an entire career. For ten years, alongside this, she trained interns and residents at university.
She is a trichologist, holding a diploma from the Colegio Ibero‑Latinoamericano de Dermatología. Trichology is the medical discipline devoted to hair and scalp: their physiology, their cycle, their pathologies. It is a rare speciality, and it governs every formulation decision at Affrenchy.
She also holds diplomas in Exposome and Skin and in Photobiology from the University of Barcelona, and is completing a diploma in Integrative Dermatology. Behind those scholarly words sits one idea: your skin and your hair tell the rest of the story. What you eat, how you sleep, what you are going through, the light you take in. All of it ends up written on the fibre.
Nine years formulating for real women
In 2017, her patients were asking for treatments the Colombian market left aside. She answered with magistral formulations, compounded to measure for each clinical case. Then they wanted more, and she built a full range of over twenty dermocosmetic treatments, sold in her practice and online across Colombia.
Nine years of formulating, producing, and listening to what customers came back and said. A real practice, rooted in the consulting room. That is the experience she brings to Affrenchy, this time with a deliberate choice: French partners, an entirely French supply chain, and the finest cosmetic craft in the world.
Juliana Sofía
Bernal Flórez
My mother has the science. I have the conviction that a discovery comes alive the day someone shares it.
I was sixteen when I started working with her. She had the formulas, the patients, the twenty years of clinical practice. What was missing was someone to tell the world about it. I built the site, opened the accounts, learned to write for social media, and gathered a community of more than ten thousand women around her. We have carried on year after year since.
In 2020, I packed my bags. France, because this is where the finest cosmetics in the world are made, and because I wanted to bring our family business here. I landed with three words of vocabulary: bonjour, croissant, merci. French is my third language, and I had eight months to learn it well enough to start a law degree in Nantes that September.
Those eight months are among the hardest of my life. I missed my mother. I missed my friends. I missed Apolo, our dog. Everything I knew was on the other side of the Atlantic, and I spent my days conjugating verbs.
People often ask whether the distance pushed us apart. Exactly the opposite happened.
I now hold a double master's degree from SKEMA Business School, in management and in corporate finance, after a law degree at Nantes Université. Those years gave me the tools: strategy, marketing, sales, communication.
What gets me up in the morning is something else. Building a place where women recognise each other, talk to each other, and finally feel accompanied in front of their mirror. My mother brings the science. I bring the words to share it, and the hands to build the house that holds it.
To set free
We searched for a long time. We needed a word that says France, because this country leads the world in cosmetics and our treatment deserved its laboratories. And a word that says freedom, because that is what we want for you.
Affrenchy holds both. French, for the standard. Affranchir, to set free, for what really matters: grey and white hair is a privilege worth celebrating, and our craft is to reveal it rather than cover it every twenty‑eight days.
What we want to change
is the way you are looked at.