Ask who owns The Honest Company and most people picture Jessica Alba, full stop — she co-founded it, fronted its launch, and is still the face most associated with the brand. The honest answer is more interesting, and more checkable than most celebrity-brand ownership stories, because The Honest Company is one of the few in this category that actually trades on a public exchange. Alba’s stake isn’t a magazine’s estimate. It is a number the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires her to file — and by that filing, it has been shrinking for a decade.
The stake, as filed
Per a Schedule 13G/A that Alba filed with the SEC — covering her position as of December 31, 2025, filed February 17, 2026 — she beneficially owns 6,123,094 shares of Honest Company common stock, equal to 5.4% of the company.
| Holding | Shares | Nature | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Held directly | 1,170,058 | Sole voting/investment power | SEC Schedule 13G/A |
| Exercisable stock options | 700,000 | Currently exercisable | SEC Schedule 13G/A |
| Warren Family Trust (with Cash Warren) | 4,253,036 | Shared voting/investment power | SEC Schedule 13G/A |
| Total beneficial ownership | 6,123,094 | 5.4% of common stock | SEC Schedule 13G/A |
At HNST’s September 21, 2026 closing price of $5.33, that position is worth roughly $32.6 million — a figure anyone can reproduce from the public filing and the stock ticker, which is not something you can say about most celebrity cap tables on this site.
From an estimated 20% to a filed 5.4%
The direction of travel is the real story. Forbes estimated in 2016 that Alba held a 20% stake in the then-private company, worth about $340 million. By the time Honest went public on Nasdaq on May 5, 2021 — pricing at $16 a share and closing its first day up 44% at $23, a roughly $2.1 billion valuation — her stake had been diluted well below that. Fortune reported she held 6.6% at IPO, worth about $129.8 million at the first day’s close, and that she sold no shares in the offering. Bloomberg-sourced reporting cited by MarketRealist put the figure nearer 5%, valuing it around $68 million at the $16 offer price. The two outlets don’t agree to the decimal, but they agree on the shape: a stake that was worth nine figures at IPO has continued to shrink as a percentage, down to the 5.4% now on file with the SEC.
None of this is unique to Alba — venture and private-equity rounds dilute every founder who takes outside capital, which is exactly what happened at SKIMS and what happened here. What’s unusual is that Honest’s version of the story doesn’t rest on an estimate. Every step of the decline — 20% to roughly 5–6.6% to 5.4% — is either a filed number or reporting from outlets that had one.
A board seat, reelected on a worse-than-usual vote
Alba stepped down as chief creative officer on April 9, 2024, more than a decade after co-founding the company, a change the company announced alongside a record fourth-quarter performance. She stayed on the board, and shareholders reelected her to a fresh three-year term at Honest’s annual meeting on May 21, 2026.
The vote itself, filed in an 8-K, is the freshest and most concrete governance signal in this story. Of the votes cast, 17,459,113 shares supported Alba’s reelection and 21,791,263 were withheld — more shares withholding support than backing her. Her two board colleagues up for election that day passed by comfortable margins: Alissa Hsu Lynch collected 33,431,262 votes for against 5,819,114 withheld, and Andrea Turner 37,911,775 for against 1,338,601 withheld.
| Nominee | Votes for | Votes withheld | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jessica Alba | 17,459,113 | 21,791,263 | Reelected (uncontested) |
| Alissa Hsu Lynch | 33,431,262 | 5,819,114 | Reelected (uncontested) |
| Andrea A. Turner | 37,911,775 | 1,338,601 | Reelected (uncontested) |
Source: Honest Company 8-K, filed May 2026.
Because the election was uncontested, Alba kept her seat regardless — Honest’s bylaws, like most companies’, set no minimum support threshold for an uncontested director. The SEC filing doesn’t explain why shareholders voted the way they did. What it does is give a clean, on-the-record measure of how the shareholder base feels about the company’s most famous director specifically, distinct from how it feels about the board as a whole.
The company she isn’t running, having its best year
The vote landed in the middle of Honest’s strongest operating stretch since going public — under an executive Alba’s board hired to replace her as the company’s public face. Carla Vernón, previously an Amazon vice president and a two-decade General Mills veteran, became CEO effective January 9, 2023.
Per a transcript of the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call published by Investing.com, Honest reported net income of $10.7 million, up from $3.9 million in the same period a year earlier, and an underlying adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.8% — a company record. First-half free cash flow came in at $35.3 million, versus negative $3.8 million a year prior, against $105.9 million in cash and no debt. Reported revenue actually fell 10.9% year over year to $83.3 million, but that reflects a deliberate strategy: the company has been exiting roughly 20% of its lower-margin revenue, including moving its apparel business to an asset-light licensing model, to concentrate on higher-margin wipes and personal-care products, which now make up more than 70% of sales. Organic growth in the retained business ran 6.7%. Management raised full-year 2026 guidance to $319–$325 million in revenue and $23–$25 million in adjusted EBITDA.
The market noticed: shares jumped after the print and have kept climbing since, trading in a 52-week range of $2.07 to just over $6 as of mid-September 2026. That is real progress from the stock’s post-IPO low — and still a fraction of the $16 IPO price and the $23 first-day close that valued Alba’s founding stake at nine figures in 2021.
The takeaway
Most of the ownership stories on this site rest on an estimate — Forbes’ best guess at what Kim Kardashian holds in SKIMS, or what the Gredes hold alongside her, because private companies don’t have to say. The Honest Company doesn’t give Alba that shelter. Because it’s public, her stake is a disclosed fact that shrinks on a public schedule, and the market puts a real-time price on it every trading day. That transparency cuts both ways: it’s also public record, in an 8-K anyone can read, that a meaningful share of Honest’s shareholders declined to back her specific return to the board this year — even as the company she stepped back from is having its best operating year since it went public.
More ownership breakdowns: who owns SKIMS, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty stake, and whether Ryan Reynolds owns Stok Cold Brew.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns The Honest Company? The Honest Company is publicly traded on Nasdaq under the ticker HNST, so its ownership is spread across public shareholders, institutions and company insiders. Co-founder Jessica Alba is one of its largest individual holders: per a Schedule 13G/A she filed with the SEC covering her position as of December 31, 2025, she beneficially owns 6,123,094 shares, or 5.4% of the company. She does not run day-to-day operations — Carla Vernón has been chief executive since January 2023.
How much of The Honest Company does Jessica Alba own? 5.4%, per the Schedule 13G/A Alba filed with the SEC in February 2026, covering her holdings as of December 31, 2025. That breaks down as 6,123,094 shares total: 1,170,058 held directly, 700,000 issuable through currently exercisable stock options, and 4,253,036 held through the Warren Family Trust she shares with her husband, Cash Warren. That is down from an estimated 6.6% (Fortune) or roughly 5% (Bloomberg, via MarketRealist) at the company’s May 2021 IPO, and down further from the 20% stake Forbes estimated in 2016, before later funding rounds diluted the founders.
Is Jessica Alba still involved with The Honest Company? As a board member, yes; as an executive, no. Alba served as chief creative officer from the company’s 2011 founding until stepping down on April 9, 2024, a role change the company announced following a record fourth-quarter performance. She remains on the board of directors — shareholders reelected her to a Class II, three-year term at the May 21, 2026 annual meeting.
Why did shareholders withhold votes from Jessica Alba in 2026? The company’s own SEC filing doesn’t say — an 8-K reports the vote tally but not shareholders’ reasoning. What it shows is that of the votes cast at the May 21, 2026 annual meeting, 17,459,113 shares supported Alba’s reelection to the board and 21,791,263 were withheld, meaning more shares withheld support than backed her. Her two fellow director nominees that year passed with far more favorable ratios — Alissa Hsu Lynch, 33.4 million for versus 5.8 million withheld; Andrea Turner, 37.9 million for versus 1.3 million withheld. Because it was an uncontested election, Alba was seated regardless; Honest’s bylaws set no minimum support threshold to win an uncontested board seat.
Is The Honest Company profitable in 2026? By several measures, yes, and increasingly so. Per a transcript of the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call published by Investing.com, Honest reported net income of $10.7 million, up from $3.9 million a year earlier, underlying adjusted EBITDA margin at an all-time high of 9.8%, and first-half free cash flow of $35.3 million versus negative $3.8 million in the prior-year period, with $105.9 million in cash and no debt. Management raised full-year 2026 guidance to $319–$325 million in revenue and $23–$25 million in adjusted EBITDA.
How does Jessica Alba’s stake compare to Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS stake? The comparison is less about the size of the stake than the certainty of the number. SKIMS is privately held, so Kim Kardashian’s reported one-third ownership is Forbes’ informed estimate, not a disclosed figure. The Honest Company is a public company, so Alba’s ownership is a matter of federal securities law: she must file with the SEC every time her stake or a related transaction changes, which is how her 5.4% figure — and its decline from an estimated 20% in 2016 — is independently verifiable rather than estimated.
