FROM SOIL TO SOUL
Raven Botanicals is a sister-led Scottish skincare brand shaped by family, landscape and a lifelong love of the wild.
Founded after the loss of our mum, Raven grew from a need for grounding and purpose through plants, ritual, creativity and care. From our rural studio in East Lothian, we create high performance, plant based skincare designed to nourish, support and restore confidence at every stage of life.
OUR ROOTS
We grew up as free-range children in the Scottish Borders, paddling in the river, gathering hedgerow herbs, and making potions from whatever we could find.
Our Mum’s incredible knowledge of plants and our Dad’s landscape-inspired artworks meant we lived a childhood steeped in nature, art and imagination.
Charlotte’s love of plants began long before she studied botany.
While other children were glued to cartoons, she was more interested in old remedies, hedgerow finds and anything that resembled a cauldron! It was only a matter of time before those early experiments turned into a lifelong fascination with plant science and, eventually, the formulations at the heart of Raven Botanicals.
Long before sustainability was a buzzword, plastic was banned from our home and we were self-sufficient in many foods.
Those early years shaped everything we do now.
Raven Botanicals is our tribute to that upbringing: a love letter to the land, to the power of plants, and to the everyday rituals that help people feel comfort in their own skin.
With backgrounds spanning botany, forensics and fine art, we blend scientific clarity with creative intuition. Our formulations combine Scottish botanicals from hillside to coastline, with exceptional ethically sourced ingredients from trusted growers and suppliers in the UK and beyond. The result is skincare rooted in ritual, efficacy and genuine care for skin health and self esteem.
In a world where so many of us struggle with confidence because of our skin, our mission is simple: to help you feel good in yours.
WHY THE RAVEN?
When we were children, our parents rescued injured corvids from traps along the riverbank. Two stayed with us long-term, becoming beloved members of our family. They were intelligent, characterful companions who taught us more about resilience and connection than we realised at the time. The flying bird silhouette (a common motif in our Dad's early sculptures) has followed us ever since.
The raven is our symbol of transformation, connection, and care.
Its threads run through our packaging, our studio and our identity, reflecting the way in which our brand and family story are aligned and intertwined.
Our visual identity is drawn from a flying crow silhouette in the Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial sculpture, made by our dad, Jake Harvey, in the 1980s. That soaring bird carries the symbolism of transformation, resilience and guardianship - values that sit at the heart of our brand. The raven draws together threads of family, landscape and creativity that run through everything we make.
HUGH MCDIARMID MEMORIAL SCULPTURE
by Jake Harvey
Image: Claire Lucy
OUR ETHICS
HIGH PERFORMANCE
We create beautiful products that are a pleasure to use, but most importantly WORK to address skin concerns. We don't use product bases and 'flavour' with essential oils or use white label ready-made formulations. Everything we make is formulated and handmade by us in our rural East Lothian studio.
PLANET POSITIVE
We partner with Ecologi to plant a tree for each product we sell and also make regular product donations to Women's Aid. We use many UK grown ingredients and support ethical supply chains for ingredients grown outside the UK. We also use circular ingredients like grape seed and raspberry seed oils in our luxurious products.
RESPONSIBLY SOURCED
From golden sea buckthorn hand-picked on the ancient East Lothian coastline to Scottish lavender grown just sixty miles away, we source ingredients locally and from the UK, where possible. UK grown ingredients we use include white poppy, arvensis, hemp, blackcurrant, sea buckthorn, borage, nettle, lavender and rosemary.
VEGAN & CRUELTY FREE
We are proudly accredited by Cruelty Free International and endorsed by the Compassionate Shopping Guide and will never use ingredients that have been tested on animals - or test our own products on animals. All of our products are vegan.
PALM OIL FREE
As well as being bad for biodiversity and eroding small farming communities, palm production is a major cause of deforestation, habitat loss, soil degradation and greenhouse gas emissions. Raven Botanicals is a palm oil free company.
REUSE, REFILL, RECYCLE
We supply our products in widely recyclable materials like glass and aluminium and all of our pumps and droppers are reusable. Our packaging is deliberately simple and we protect your products in transit with biodegradable plant-based packing peanuts which dissolve on contact with water.
