By: Alva Ree
For Lysenko, creating Farfacia meant moving beyond individual consultations and finding a way to make her knowledge available to people she would never meet personally. She had to think not only about skincare, but also about formulation, product development, brand identity, customer relationships, and how to build a company capable of growing beyond one location.
The story behind Farfacia reflects an essential part of Lysenko’s approach to entrepreneurship: noticing a real problem, taking it seriously, and creating a practical solution.
2022: Starting Again In France
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 abruptly changed everything.
Lysenko left Ukraine with her daughter and arrived in France facing the challenge of rebuilding both her personal life and her business in an unfamiliar environment. The circumstances demanded more than resilience in the abstract. She had to deal with legal and administrative questions, adapt to a new country, continue developing products, and find ways to restore momentum around Farfacia.
Support from the French beauty community, including CEW France, became an important part of that process. Professional relationships helped her navigate a period in which many of the structures she had relied upon before were no longer available.
France became not simply a place of refuge, but another chapter in her entrepreneurial journey.
For a founder entering a new market, building a presence requires much more than bringing products across a border. It means understanding a new audience, creating professional relationships, learning a different business environment, and earning recognition within an established industry.
Lysenko gradually began doing exactly that.
Farfacia Finds Its Place In The French Beauty Market
In 2023, Lysenko and Farfacia received visibility in French media and beauty publications. Vivre Paris featured her in an article titled “Nataliia Lysenko, reine de beauté résiliente,” presenting her story as a Ukrainian beauty entrepreneur rebuilding her professional life in France.
Farfacia products also appeared in French beauty and skincare selections, placing the brand within the wider conversation around beauty products available to French consumers.
Her professional journey in France also brought opportunities to participate in industry events and appear alongside other beauty professionals and entrepreneurs. These experiences helped expand her professional network and gave Farfacia greater visibility within a market far removed from where the company had begun.
For Lysenko, these moments represented more than publicity. They demonstrated that a business could continue developing even after a dramatic interruption, and that professional identity could be rebuilt in a new country.
A New Country, A New Life
The next chapter brought Lysenko to the United States.
The move became another major turning point, both personally and professionally. After significant changes in her personal life, including divorce, Lysenko found herself in a new country without the established support system she had once known.
There was no familiar circle of people around her to rely on.
And that experience changed the way she thought about community.
Instead of waiting to find the circle she needed, she began creating it herself.
She surrounded herself with women, entrepreneurs, beauty professionals, friends, and women who were also navigating new chapters in their own lives. What initially grew from a personal need gradually became part of her broader professional mission.
She did not find the community she needed; she created it.
For Lysenko, this became a powerful realization: women can accomplish much more when they have a circle in which they can exchange experience, encourage one another, share opportunities, and simply know that they are not alone.
Building In America
Lysenko ultimately made a conscious decision to remain in the United States with her daughter and build their future there.
Rather than viewing another move as the end of what she had created, she saw America as an opportunity to begin a new chapter.
New York became the setting for the next stage of her professional life. Here, she is continuing to develop Farfacia for the American market while expanding her work beyond skincare into personal branding, education, entrepreneurship, and mentorship.
Her international experience gives her a particular perspective on starting again. She knows what it means to enter a market where nobody knows your name, to rebuild professional relationships, and to translate years of experience into a new environment.
But she also understands that starting over does not mean starting from nothing.
She brought her knowledge, professional experience, entrepreneurial skills, and vision with her.
Why Women Became Central To Her Mission
Supporting women has become the connecting thread throughout Lysenko’s professional journey.
As an educator in Ukraine, she helped beauty professionals develop their skills. As a beauty entrepreneur, she worked closely with women and learned to understand their individual needs and concerns. As a founder navigating international markets, she experienced firsthand how important professional relationships and community can become.
And as a woman rebuilding her own life in a new country, she discovered the importance of creating the kind of support system she herself had needed.
Today, her mentorship work brings these experiences together.
Her message is relevant to women who are starting businesses, changing careers, moving to another country, returning to professional life, or simply realizing that they want something different from the next stage of their lives.
The questions she explores are universal:
How do you turn your knowledge into a business?
How do you introduce yourself to an unfamiliar market?
How do you rebuild when circumstances force you to start again?
How do you create confidence when you are surrounded by uncertainty?
And perhaps most importantly: How do you remain the author of your own life when everything around you changes?
A Book And A Bigger Professional Vision
Lysenko is now preparing to release her first book, adding another dimension to her growing professional platform.
For her, writing represents an opportunity to take the lessons of her experience beyond the immediate world of Farfacia. Entrepreneurship, relocation, motherhood, reinvention, beauty, personal development, and the experience of starting again all become part of a larger conversation about what women are capable of creating at different stages of their lives.
The book also reflects a broader evolution in Lysenko’s career.
Farfacia remains an important part of her professional identity, but her ambitions now extend beyond a skincare brand. She is building a platform through which she can share knowledge, create connections, mentor women, and encourage others to take their own ideas seriously.
Her experience gives that message a practical foundation. She is not speaking about reinvention as an abstract concept. She has lived through it repeatedly.
More Than Resilience
What makes Nataliia Lysenko’s story particularly compelling is not simply the number of countries in which she has lived or worked, but her ability to begin again without abandoning what she has built.
From Ukraine to France and now the United States, she has repeatedly had to adapt, make difficult decisions, and create new opportunities from unfamiliar circumstances.
Her decision to remain in America with her daughter became another defining moment. Instead of seeing a new country as a limitation, she chose to see it as a new beginning, one in which she could continue developing Farfacia, expand her professional identity, and build a future on her own terms.
And perhaps the most meaningful part of that journey is what she chose to do with her own experience.
When she found herself without a familiar circle of people around her, she began building one. When she entered unfamiliar markets, she created new professional relationships. When circumstances forced her to change direction, she carried her knowledge and experience forward.
She did not simply rebuild her life. She continued building and began creating space for other women to build alongside her.
Today, Lysenko’s work brings together beauty, entrepreneurship, personal branding, education, and mentorship. Her forthcoming book will add another dimension to that work, allowing her to share the lessons gathered through years of professional experience and personal transformation.
Her story is ultimately about more than resilience. It is about agency, the decision to remain the author of your own life even when circumstances change.
For women who find themselves starting over, changing careers, moving countries, building businesses, or questioning what is possible at a new stage of life, Lysenko’s experience offers a powerful reminder:
A new chapter does not mean starting from nothing. You take your knowledge, experience, courage, relationships, and vision with you, and you build again.
And this time, you do not have to build alone.
