While By Lovely Suites prepares to open its doors, the actress, content creator and NIVEA face is turning years of visibility into something tangible a space, a business and a vision entirely her own.
On July 4, 2025, Lerato Nxumalo had a conversation with her mother about opening a salon. At the time, it was nothing more than an idea.
A possibility spoken aloud.Today, that conversation is almost a year behind her, and the dream is preparing to open its doors.
By Lovely Suites, Nxumalo’s forthcoming beauty destination in Midrand, is the latest expression of a career that has quietly expanded far beyond the roles that first introduced her to audiences.
The actress has become a digital storyteller, a familiar face in beauty and lifestyle spaces, a brand partner and, increasingly, a businesswoman.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about this chapter is that it does not feel like a reinvention.
It feels like a continuation. For years, Nxumalo has been inviting people into her world through a camera.
Her YouTube channel, which she began building in 2016, has grown into a substantial platform centred around vlogs, travel, beauty and lifestyle.
There is an ease to the way she creates. Her content often feels less like a performance and more like an invitation to spend a little time in her day.
That distinction has become increasingly valuable in a digital landscape where audiences can tell the difference between someone who is simply visible and someone who has cultivated genuine connection.
Nxumalo has done the latter. Her appeal online is not dependent on a character or a television storyline.
It lives in the familiarity of watching her move through everyday life getting ready, travelling, shopping, working, creating and simply being herself.
Over time, that consistency has given her something more enduring than a moment of attention: an audience.
And now, she is beginning to build for that audience in a different way.
By Lovely Suites is her first physical shop, bringing together hair, wigs, installations, braids, nails and lashes.
But Nxumalo has been clear that the space is intended to be more than somewhere clients come to have their hair or nails done.
The idea is rooted in luxury, calm and the simple pleasure of taking time for oneself. It is a fitting ambition for someone whose digital presence has always been closely connected to beauty and lifestyle.
The salon, however, is not the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey.
In 2025, she introduced blaHoody, a comfort-wear brand built around oversized fleece hoodies designed to feel like wearable blankets.
It was another indication that Nxumalo was beginning to think beyond the traditional boundaries of entertainment.
There is consistency between the businesses. They are not necessarily extensions of acting, but they are extensions of the sensibility she has developed around herself.
That is what makes Nxumalo’s evolution particularly interesting.
The modern creator has the ability to take the things people already associate with them their taste, personality, aesthetic and interests and turn those things into something that can be built, owned and grown.
Brand partnerships placed her within larger conversations around beauty and lifestyle.
Entrepreneurship is now asking her to take all of those experiences and turn them into something with a life beyond the screen.
Her work with NIVEA sits naturally within that progression. As one of the faces associated with the brand’s Extra Bright Body Serum campaign, Nxumalo occupies a space where beauty is not simply something she represents for a camera.
It has become part of the broader language of her public identity self-care, presentation, confidence and the rituals that make people feel good in their own skin.
But there is a difference between promoting a beauty product and building a beauty business.
The latter comes with considerably more responsibility.
The latter comes with considerably more responsibility.
In a candid reflection shared through By Lovely Suites, Nxumalo opened up about just how demanding the process had been.
What she imagined would be a much quicker journey became months of fittings, decisions, administration and waiting.
There were expensive delays. Contractors who disappointed her. Recruitment. Attorneys. Human resources and labour matters.
The complicated business of relying on other people to turn a vision that exists clearly in your head into something that physically exists in the world.
There were sleepless nights. There were moments when she questioned everything. And there were moments when she wondered whether life might be easier if she simply wanted less.
It is a remarkably honest admission from someone whose public image is often encountered through finished photographs, polished videos and carefully considered campaigns.
The finished product rarely tells you about the middle. The middle is where the real work happens.
For Nxumalo, faith appears to have been part of how she navigated that uncertainty.
In reflecting on the process, she spoke about continually returning to God when the parts of the journey she could not control became overwhelming.
Beauty spaces have always been intimate. They are places where transformation happens, but also where women talk, decompress, reconnect with themselves and leave feeling renewed.
A good salon offers more than a service. It offers an experience. That is the experience Nxumalo appears to want to create.
Perhaps that is why By Lovely Suites feels like more than another business announcement.
She has spent years building a world people could watch through a screen. Now, she is building one they can walk into.
There will be the excitement of opening day, the first appointments, the first clients and the moment the doors finally open after months of uncertainty.
But the more significant moment happened much earlier.
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