Today we’d like to introduce you to Brie Ever.
Hi Brie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story really started about 10 years ago, when I was around 21 and had this idea for a Black girl wellness shop called House of Melanin. I wanted to create a space that combined wellness, self-care, creativity, and community—selling things like body butters, scrubs, mugs, T-shirts, and other lifestyle products. Around that same time, I started my YouTube channel, Told by Brie, where I shared vlogs and little pieces of my everyday life.
Then I started working full-time at FedEx in 2016, and somewhere along the way, my creative dreams got put on the back burner. For several years, I was essentially asleep creatively. I always knew there was something bigger I was meant to do, so I remember feeling like I was doing myself a disservice by not pursuing it.
The pandemic became a major turning point for me. I was 25, and I had this uncomfortable realization that if something happened to me, the main things people could say about my life were that I was funny, I was fun, and I worked at FedEx. That really shook me. I decided I couldn’t continue living that way, so I started creating again.
Around that time, I transitioned from the idea of House of Melanin into what became Marley Avenue, a plant-based body care brand. Marley Avenue was really the beginning of my creative renaissance. I taught myself product formulation, packaging, graphic design, marketing, and what it meant to actually build a business. I remember selling body butters to my coworkers and making $700 in one Thursday. That was the moment I realized, oh, I might really have something here.
I eventually left my job with this huge vision of becoming a full-time entrepreneur, but I didn’t yet have the tools or infrastructure to support the life I was trying to create. That led me into a very difficult chapter of my life. In 2022, after losing my job under incredibly painful circumstances, I lost my car and then my apartment within a few months. I experienced homelessness, spent time living in a car, and eventually had to return to Birmingham with very little.
As difficult as that period was, it completely changed me. It forced me to confront myself, rebuild, and figure out what I wanted my life to actually look like. I began exploring makeup artistry and worked with companies like Sephora and Live Tinted while continuing to create and find my way back to myself.
When I returned to Birmingham, I initially wondered, Why am I here? What’s next for me? Then one Sunday morning, I had the idea for Bloom In Motion, a social wellness collective created to give Black women access to community and heart-centered spaces where we could reflect, move our bodies, and grow together. Through Bloom In Motion, I hosted more than 20 events—from yoga and walking groups to writing sessions and body butter experiences. It really affirmed something I’ve always known about myself: I love creating spaces where people can connect and feel cared for.
That eventually led me to The Butter Lab, which I launched in November 2025. Through The Butter Lab, I’ve hosted roughly 20–25 hands-on body care classes where people create their own body butter, body scrub, and body oil trio. It’s given me an entirely new perspective on entrepreneurship and shown me that creativity can become not only a product, but an experience and a community.
Today, I call myself the Creative Alchemist because that’s really how I’ve learned to move through life. I’ve experienced things that could have completely destroyed me, but I’ve learned how to take the discomfort, unpredictability, loss, and uncertainty and alchemize it into something creative. I pour those experiences back into what I build.
I’m a singer, makeup artist, photographer and videographer, content creator, brand strategist, visionary, and creative entrepreneur. I have a million different mediums through which I can express an idea, but underneath all of them is the same purpose: to create, connect, and turn what I’ve lived through into something meaningful.
I’m still very much in the process of becoming, but I think that’s the most beautiful part of my story. I didn’t arrive here through a straight line. I got here by continually beginning again.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it definitely has not been a smooth road. If anything, my journey has been defined by having to begin again.
One of my biggest struggles has been learning how to pursue entrepreneurship while also trying to build stability. When I first decided to pursue entrepreneurship, I had the vision and the passion, but I didn’t necessarily have the financial resources, business knowledge, or infrastructure to sustain it. I had to learn a lot of those lessons the hard way.
In 2022, I experienced one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I was wrongfully terminated from my job under incredibly painful circumstances, and within a few months, I lost my car and my apartment as well. After two months of living with a close friend, I decided to leave Birmingham for Atlanta, where I would stay with my father.
There were also emotional struggles that came with having to rebuild while processing everything I had experienced. I had to learn how to sit with disappointment, grief, uncertainty, and the realization that sometimes the people or circumstances you expect to be safe aren’t. That was difficult to navigate while simultaneously trying to figure out what came next for my career and my life.
While in Atlanta, I focused on building Marley Avenue from scratch and began developing my career as a makeup artist while balancing my job at Sephora. After nearly two years in Atlanta, on December 28, 2024, I returned home from spending Christmas with my mother and sisters in Birmingham to discover that my belongings had been completely removed from my father’s home. With no warning or formal notice, I was unexpectedly homeless.
I would spend the next few weeks living out of a car, showering at the gym or at friends’ houses when I could, and driving for Uber to survive until my mother encouraged me to come back home. I had just turned 30 two weeks earlier, and I thought 2022 was rock bottom. Boy, was I wrong.
That experience forced me to navigate a very isolating lesson: I would never again allow my safety and stability to be placed entirely in someone else’s hands.
I think one of the biggest lessons has been that struggle doesn’t have to be the end of the story. I’ve learned how to take difficult experiences and turn them into something constructive. Bloom In Motion came out of my season of homelessness as I transitioned back to Birmingham. The Butter Lab came out of my creativity and my love for bringing people together, while also giving me a creative refuge as I worked to regain stability through a full-time job. Even my identity as the Creative Alchemist comes from that process of transforming what I’ve been through into something meaningful and beautiful.
So no, it hasn’t been smooth. There have been a lot of detours, losses, and moments where I genuinely didn’t know what was next. But every time I’ve had to start over, I’ve discovered another part of myself. And honestly, I think that’s what has brought me to where I am today.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My work is rooted in creativity, storytelling, community, and turning ideas into tangible experiences. I’m a multi-hyphenate creative entrepreneur, and I often describe myself as a Creative Alchemist because I have the ability to take an idea, an experience, or even something difficult I’ve lived through and transform it into something meaningful, beautiful, and useful.
My background spans several creative disciplines. I’m a singer, makeup artist, photographer and videographer, content creator, brand strategist, creative visionary, and entrepreneur. I’ve also built businesses in wellness and beauty, including Marley Avenue, my plant-based body care brand, and The Butter Lab, my hands-on body care experience where people create their own body butter, body scrub, and body oil.
A huge part of my work is also centered around creating experiences and spaces for people to connect. Through Bloom In Motion, I created a social wellness collective for Black women centered around reflection, movement, community, and growth. Through The Butter Lab, I’ve been able to combine creativity, education, entrepreneurship, and community into an experience that people can physically participate in. More recently, I’ve been exploring how to bring my love for music, food, storytelling, and connection together through unreleased projects.
I think I’m best known for being able to see the bigger picture. I’m naturally a visionary. I can have an idea and immediately start thinking about the story behind it, how it should look and feel, how people should experience it, how it can become a business, and how it can create connection. I don’t just want to make something that looks good—I want it to mean something.
What I’m most proud of is that I’ve continued to create despite everything that has happened in my life. A lot of the work I’ve built came during seasons when I was rebuilding myself. Marley Avenue was born during the uncertainty and isolation of the pandemic. I had spent six years working a job I hated and that, in many ways, felt like it hated me back. Birthing Marley Avenue became my personal creative renaissance. It reminded me that there was so much more inside of me than the life I had been living.
Bloom In Motion came out of a season of hopelessness, homelessness, and geographical transition. The Butter Lab came from my need for a creative outlet that could also create financial stability—something I could build with my hands, feel connected to, and invite other people into. My businesses and creative projects have become proof to me that my circumstances don’t get the final say in what I’m capable of creating.
What sets me apart is the combination of vision and versatility. I’m not limited to one medium. I can tell a story through a photograph, a song, a product, a brand, a video, an event, or an experience. But regardless of the medium, there is always an intention behind what I create.
At the core of my work is a desire to make people feel something, to feel seen, inspired, connected, cared for, or brave enough to begin again. I think that’s ultimately what makes my work mine.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I think the biggest thing I’d want readers to know is that I’m still becoming.
There’s a version of my story that could be told entirely through the things I’ve lost, the doors that closed, the moments I felt behind, or the seasons when I had no idea how I was going to make it through. But I’ve learned that those things are only part of the story. I’m much more interested in what I’ve been able to create from them.
I spent a lot of my life believing that I had to have everything figured out before I could move forward. Now, I understand that sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply begin again. You can lose a job, lose a home, change careers, start a business, move cities, discover a new version of yourself, and still be exactly where you’re supposed to be.
I’ve also learned that creativity isn’t just something I do—it’s how I survive, how I process, how I connect, and how I make sense of the world. It has carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my life, and it continues to introduce me to possibilities I couldn’t have imagined for myself.
So if there’s anything I hope people take away from my story, it’s that you don’t have to have one path. You don’t have to be one thing. You don’t have to know exactly where you’re going before you start walking.
You’re allowed to reinvent yourself. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to start over as many times as you need to.
And sometimes, the life you’re building after everything falls apart becomes more beautiful than the life you thought you were supposed to have.
That’s the space I’m creating from now: a life, a body of work, and a legacy that feels like me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bybriever/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@bybriever?si=Gej3vEh1SU-CYWEr
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bybriever
