Mbali Leboe Named Her Salon After the Women Who Made Her

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

Mbali is a part of the Silver Lining global community thanks to support from Nedbank’s SimplyBiz.

(small.news) — Mbali Leboe did not plan to build a beauty salon. She planned to work in electrical engineering. She earned her N1 to N3 certificates, passed interviews, cleared fitness tests, and attended inductions — and watched every single opportunity dissolve into a rejection letter at the final moment.

The path she had prepared for kept closing. So she did what many people do when the way forward disappears: she prayed. And then she dreamed. For three consecutive nights, she dreamed of hair tools, makeup kits, and nail equipment. She dismissed it. Then one morning, making breakfast for her grandmother, the vision returned with a force that made her break down. She had never seen herself in the beauty industry. She asked God how it could ever sustain her. Within three weeks of starting to braid, she made R3000. The path, it turned out, had not closed. It had redirected.

The Name that Carries Everything

Mawes Grace Beauty Salon is not named arbitrarily. Every word in that name holds weight. “Mawe” is the affectionate name Mbali called her grandmother — the woman who was present when the vision broke through, and whose kitchen table was the unofficial birthplace of the business. “Grace” is her mother’s name. The business is formally registered as a tribute to both — the two women who shaped her most, whose love runs through every appointment, every client, every skill she has taught herself from the ground up.

Mbali built every capability she has through self-training and a quality she describes plainly as manifestation. She once joked with a friend while stocking hairpieces that she would learn nails within the year. She did. She said the same about cornrows. That happened too. She launched the entire business on R600 to R800 a month — stipends from her work as an after-care tutor — and from every client she booked, she set aside R20 for her grandmother. It was a small act, repeated faithfully, that made the work feel like it was already for something larger than herself.

“I started this entire business using the tiny stipends I earned as an after-care tutor, giving my grandmother R20 from every single client I booked.” — Mbali Leboe, Founder, Mawes Grace Beauty Salon

The Year that Tried to Take Everything

2024 was the hardest year of Mbali’s life. In March, her grandmother passed away. Following the death, her uncle moved into the house and stopped her from operating out of the dining room where she had been seeing clients. Rather than let the business die, she moved her workspace into her bedroom — entirely unashamed, she says, to open her private space to clients. The business would not be paused for grief, and a lack of a formal space would not end it.

In June, she lost her best friend — the one who had always told her to stop chasing engineering and lean into beauty; the person on whom she had practiced her very first nail set and cornrows. Before she passed, she sent a message: “God will bless and diversify your craft.” In September, Mbali lost her aunt — the cheerleader who had funded her first Facebook ads and reliably brought new clients through the door. Three people. Three months apart. Each one irreplaceable.

Grief Channeled into Someone Else’s Future

What Mbali has done with that grief is remarkable. Rather than let it contract the business, she has used it to expand what the business means. This year, she hosted an educational nail technology training session and successfully trained four unemployed young people in her community. The skill she taught herself from nothing, she is now teaching others — so that the path she had to find alone does not have to be found alone by the next person.

Through mentorship from Silver Lining, Mbali has grown her self-confidence, developed a stronger operational mindset, and begun scaling her practice. The bedroom salon is a chapter, not the destination. Her goal is capital funding — enough to move into a formal commercial space, hire local youth, and introduce new services. She is building it the same way she built everything else: skill by skill, client by client, step by deliberate step.

“What keeps me going is the responsibility to live out the legacy of my grandmother, aunt, and best friend. I am doing this for them now.” – Mbali Leboe, Founder, Mawes Grace Beauty Salon

Legacy that Outlasts Loss

For small business owners everywhere who have kept building through circumstances that would justify stopping, Mbali Leboe’s story offers something more than inspiration — it offers a model. A business does not require perfect conditions, formal premises, external funding, or a conventional origin story. It requires a person who refuses to let it die, who is willing to work from a bedroom if that is what it takes, who gives R20 from every booking to the grandmother who believed in her, and who channels every loss into a reason to keep going.

Mawes Grace Beauty Salon is still in its early chapters. But the name above the door — borrowed from a grandmother and a mother — already tells you what it is being built for, and who it will outlast its founder to honor.

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