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Short bio (50 words)

Valerie Duplan is a licensed cosmetologist, founder of Natural Beauty by Val, and creator of My Crown AI — the first AI built for fine natural hair. Through her education, consultations, and the CROWNED Conversations podcast, she serves Black women with fine 3c–4c hair worldwide.

Long bio (150 words)

Valerie Duplan is the licensed cosmetologist and founder behind Natural Beauty by Val, the leading education brand for Black women with fine natural hair. She fell in love with hair at 15 and with women's confidence at age 6. After studying in Bloomfield, New Jersey, she returned to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2010 to earn her license at Dudley Beauty School — then opened Natural Beauty by Val that same year in a small salon suite at Salon Central, Charlotte, where she worked until the pandemic.

Years of real chair conversations revealed a gap: generic "4c" advice was never designed for fragile, fine strands. She built The Duplan Method™ — a fine-hair-first framework — and later created My Crown AI™, the first AI hair analysis tool built specifically for fine textured hair. She hosts CROWNED Conversations: Real Talk for Fine Natural Hair, and leads The Fine Hair Expert Institute™ under Duplan Enterprise LLC.

Valerie is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and serves clients worldwide via Zoom.