Farhana Huq grew up just minutes from the New Jersey Shore, but the ocean never felt like a place she belonged.
Her love for nature began early as her father took her fishing, built a treehouse in their backyard, and encouraged her curiosity about the outdoors. Yet surfing always felt out of reach, not because of the waves, but because Huq didn’t see women who looked like her in the water.
“There weren’t really places to learn surfing unless you were born into a surfing family,” the daughter of Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants said in a Rooted Unmuted interview. “And girls really didn’t surf.”
Brown Girl Surf began as a storytelling platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of women surfers from underrepresented backgrounds. Over time, it evolved into a broader social enterprise centered on sustainability, climate action, ethical beauty, and community building.
Despite its evolution, Huq says its purpose has remained the same: creating the representation she never saw growing up.
Growing Up Between Cultures
Huq describes her upbringing as molded by the reinvention of tradition. Her mother, who immigrated from Bangladesh, had escaped an arranged marriage at 15 years old before coming to the United States and building a new life for herself.
“She was one of the first women in our family to really break conventional barriers,” Huq said. “But she still held onto her traditions and values.”
That shaped Huq’s worldview early on. She grew up balancing South Asian traditions at home while navigating a very different culture outside of it. At the same time, she was raised in a family that encouraged girls to pursue their passions, something she now recognizes as a privilege many women do not have access to.
As a teenager, Huq became the first South Asian Girl in the U.S. National Karate Team. Later, while studying at Tufts University and spending time in post-apartheid South Africa, she became more aware of the realities many women faced worldwide.
“I realized very early that life looked very different for girls around the world,” she said.
This led her to found C.E.O. Women, a nonprofit focused on helping low-income immigrant and refugee women become entrepreneurs. She spent over a decade leading the organization and working with more than 2,000 women.
While C.E.O. Women was thriving, the pace of running the organization began taking a toll on Huq physically. She was gaining weight, feeling sluggish, eating poorly, and eventually felt completely depleted despite the nonprofit’s success.
“I had this strong desire to reconnect with my health and my body,” she said.
Finding Surfing and Herself
Huq first tried surfing during a trip to Hawaii. She laughs now, remembering how terrible she was at it.
“I sucked. I mean, really sucked,” she said.
But there was something about the ocean that kept pulling her back.
Eventually, she traveled to Costa Rica to really apply herself to surfing. Later, she started surfing in Northern California and fell in love with the sport.
“Something felt so empowering about being able to maneuver through the ocean, catch a wave, and ride it,” she said.
Surfing became the space where Huq could reconnect with herself emotionally and creatively after years of burnout. It also gave her something many South Asian women are not always encouraged to pursue freely: risk, adventure, and ownership over their own bodies.
Then came another turning point.
After returning from a year-long surf sabbatical around the world, doctors discovered several cysts in her body. Though they turned out to be small, the experience forced her to reevaluate her life and what was next.
“My first instinct was, ‘I have to surf and live in the moment now,’” she said.
Soon after that, Huq came across an article about India’s first female surfer.
“I was fascinated,” she said. “I wanted to know who she was, how she did it, and how she got her family’s acceptance.”
As she researched more, Huq realized women in places like India, Bangladesh, China, and Gaza were quietly breaking barriers through surfing despite social expectations, cultural restrictions, and lack of visibility.
Those stories became the foundation of Brown Girl Surf: Creating representation instead of waiting for it.
At first, Brown Girl Surf was a storytelling platform focused on amplifying the voices of women surfers from underrepresented backgrounds.
“We need examples of living possibilities,” Huq said. “When people see someone else doing something they never thought was possible, they start believing they can do it too.”
As Brown Girl Surf grew, so did its impact. Huq traveled internationally to document the stories of female surfers, helped launch collaborative surf programs, and built networks connecting women across different countries and cultures.
“There weren’t a lot of role models that looked like me,” she said.
Brown Girl Surf was never only about surfing. It was about challenging assumptions surrounding who gets to take up space, who gets to pursue unconventional passions, and whose stories are considered worthy of visibility.
A New Evolution
During the pandemic, Huq found herself stranded in Morocco for nineteen months. When spending long periods in the ocean left her hair sun-bleached and her skin severely dehydrated, she struggled to find products that worked for her while also aligning with her environmental protection values.
So, she began experimenting with solutions herself. What started as upcycled soap bars sold out of a basket at surfer parking lots eventually grew into a sustainable beauty line now carried in retail stores across California.
One of Brown Girl Surf’s newest products, Nilotica Surf Cream, uses Nilotica shea sourced from a women’s cooperative in Uganda. According to Brown Girl Surf, fair wages are central to the cooperative’s supply chain, creating economic opportunities for women and their communities.
For Huq, sustainability is not simply branding. It is tied directly to responsibility and community.
“Climate, community, and surf culture are all connected,” she said.
That mindset deepened after becoming a climate fellow through Terra.do, where she studied climate adaptation and connected with a wider network of climate-focused organizers and entrepreneurs.
The full-circle moment
In 2012, Huq received a $500 Amber Grant to help launch Brown Girl Surf as a storytelling platform supported by a small T-shirt line. Fourteen years later, she received another Amber Grant, this time a $10,000 award supporting the next evolution of Brown Girl Surf’s sustainable skincare and haircare line.
For Huq, the moment felt symbolic.
“It’s amazing to be back,” she said.
The return of that same grant organization years later symbolizes something larger about Brown Girl Surf itself: longevity. What started as a woman trying to create representation in spaces where she felt invisible has evolved without losing its original purpose.
Advice for South Asians
“A lot of us grow up feeling like we have to follow a very specific path,” Huq said. “But I think there’s also value in listening to the thing that keeps pulling at you.”
At the same time, she encourages young people not to romanticize risk recklessly.
“Don’t go all in immediately,” she advised. “Build a solid footing while you’re figuring things out.”
More than anything, Huq hopes Brown Girl Surf reminds young people that if they don’t see themselves somewhere yet, they don’t have to wait for permission to belong.
Sometimes, it has to be created.
“We need more examples of people living boldly,” she said. “That’s how possibility spreads.”
Watch the full conversation:
