Who's Who: Priscilla Muha, College Aid Director, Skin Care Entrepreneur

Name: Priscilla Muha

Age: 54

Occupation: Director of Financial Aid at St. Mary’s College, co-owner of Montclair Skin Care

Where are you based? We’re in Oakland. We actually started out of our garage, but now we have a studio in West Oakland, in the American Steel Building. My husband does this full-time; I do this on the weekends to help out (at the farmers' markets, including the ). I’m a college administrator full-time. I work at St. Mary’s — I’m director of financial aid there.

Wow. You’ve got your hands full. Yes. Luckily, my St. Mary’s folks, the staff and faculty, are big fans. They also buy from me.

The impetus of starting this – my husband created soaps because I’m allergic to wearing perfumes and colognes. He started with soaps, went to lotions, then face creams and it kind of grew and grew. My allergies started a business for us.

Something good coming out of something horrible? Yes. We started this a little over four years ago as a side business. My husband now does it full time. He makes all of our products. He uses all essential oils — no petrochemicals, no dyes, nothing synthetic. We wanted to make a product the very best we could. We know that the folks in Berkeley, Oakland, Kensington and El Cerrito want an all-natural product. They’re proving us right. We’re very, very happy. We’re in stores now: We just went into Whole Foods.

That’s a big deal! We love what we do. We want to stay local. We enjoy contributing to our community and we hope to be around for a long time.

Did you find yourself frustrated with normal products that you were using? I had to look for everything that was dye-free and fragrance-free. I still do for laundry detergents and things like that, but all of our personal-care products here I can use with absolutely no problem.

Now I can actually wear fragrances and not have a reaction, because my husband created these for us.

What do you do for fun when you get a chance to not be working? You know, we work seven days a week. I love to garden, we have a huge garden. We like to go to the Farmers' Market (laughs).