Aimee Connolly: 'Running will always be part of my routine'
Aimee Connolly, ambassador for the Vhi Mini Marathon, encourages women of all ages and abilities to walk, jog or run the 10km event Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
In the first 10 years of the business, the 33-year-old Dubliner parlayed €10,000 of savings in to a vegan, cruelty-free cosmetic empire, with revenues of €32.6m in 2024. Sculpted by Aimee often outperforms legacy brands, such as Maybelline, Rimmel, and L’Oréal in retail outlets, and its CEO, a make-up artist and business graduate, is only getting started.
“I am someone who’s very ambitious and always driven by the goal,” Connolly says, explaining that ‘the goal’ can be anything from unlocking a new retailer to achieving a target or feeling like she’s progressing personally.
Ticking off “small, sustainable actions” has been her modus operandi: Achieving the big goals by breaking them in to small, manageable tasks.
This focus on the micro to achieve the macro has been “really important” in keeping her “fuelled for the journey”, because there are, she says, “a lot of ups and downs along the way”.
Connolly was 22 in 2016 when she started Sculpted by Aimee with a three-in-one palette, and now that she’s older and has huge responsibility — the company employs 91 staff and has no outside investors — she’s developed a self-awareness around what she needs to do to show up at work as her best self, “which actually sounds really cringe, but it’s so important, because you can’t do all the hours”, she says. “I’ve definitely learned the hard way, at times, that you just can’t keep all the balls juggling, as much as you’d like to think you’re superwoman.”
When going global is the goal, prioritising self-care is a must, because the alternative is burnout, which doesn’t serve anyone. Along the way, Connolly has teased out certain self-care strategies.
Optimising sleep has been game-changing. “I got a Whoop,” she says. “I am a classic type A who needs facts. I need to be told, ‘This is what’s happening’.”
The Whoop, a wearable biometric tracker, helped her understand “the impact sleep was having, but also what kind of sleep I was actually getting”, and that information allows her to give herself grace.
“If I know I’ve got a few late-night events, I’ll be kinder to myself the following morning,” Connolly says. “Instead of scheduling a 6am call with Korea, I’ll be like, ‘No, Aimee, don’t do that, because you’ll need the extra hour’.” She adds, “Prioritising sleep is something I’ve done in the last six months. I never really looked at how badly I was sleeping or how little I was sleeping, until it really became apparent to me that I needed to focus on it, and that’s made a huge difference.”
Exercise is also a non-negotiable and “plays a huge role in how I manage my day to day; having a good, healthy routine”. It’s “an integral part” of her week and “always features”, regardless of what kind of week she’s having, and she always feels better for it.
“Exercise,” she says, “is definitely something that keeps the head in check, as much as anything else.” She doesn’t have a personal trainer and plans her own training schedule for the week: “I try to do a mix of things and just move my body, basically”.
Connolly is a proud ambassador for this year’s Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon (and is the personification of this year’s theme, ‘Because You Can’). Vhi commissioned research on 500 female runners, highlighting the positive impact of movement on women’s health and wellbeing; Connolly was one of those surveyed. She sits in the 64% of women for whom running or walking helps them manage their PMS symptoms.
“[Running] will always be part of my routine, but, depending on how I’m feeling or how my energy levels are, I might end up going to a Pilates class, instead of a really high-intensity class. I think, having that awareness about yourself and saying to yourself, ‘It’s OK that you don’t push 150 miles an hour today’ [is important]. And if you need to have one or two more teas and treats, which I often do, to help with the symptoms and the energy, that’s OK, too.”
Her beauty routine is simple. She likes to “feel good and have no fuss”. When she wears make-up — there are lots of days when she doesn’t — the Sculpted five-minute face is her go-to (a light face tint, a brow product, mascara, cream blush, and lip liner).
And she will always have Sculpted’s Beauty Base Protect SPF 50 Primer on, “particularly when I’m out running”.
Connolly says she rarely has a duvet day, although she will “absolutely” let herself “chill out” on an occasional weekend morning with a leisurely breakfast, or “watch a show, listen to music, read my book”, but, as a rule, “being busy and doing lots of things” is what brings her “happiness and joy and fulfilment”.
“I love living life, I love all that comes with it.”
Husband John Greene is also an entrepreneur, so understands the demands and ad hoc hours of self-employment.
While it’s a “challenge for anyone who runs their own business to carve out time for themselves, let alone those around them”, you “just get really good at prioritising”, Connolly says.
The two, who are buying a house, “debate the business a lot together”, go for evening walks, and talk about the day or troubleshoot. “But also, because he works for himself, we have flexibility, where he might be able to travel with me on some of the trips I have to go on.” They make it work.
Connolly attributes her confidence and entrepreneurial drive to two things: A part-time job at a make-up counter when she was 16, and her mother. “That [job] was pivotal to building my confidence, because I was dealing with customers, and you’re meeting all sorts of personalities.
“You really had to back yourself and be confident when you were speaking to people. I really got comfortable with it.”
It wasn’t that she was “super shy” before that, she says, but that job helped her tap in to her confidence and resilience.
“My mom has always backed me to believe in myself, but sometimes you need, like, real, practical life experience to top that up.”
She describes Clare, who runs her own estate agency in South Dublin, as “the epitome of someone who has unlimited energy, unlimited willpower, resilience, discipline”, and it’s clear the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
As a young female founder, Connolly is a role model for girls and women and takes that responsibility very seriously.
Even before she started the business, she was “filter free” on socials “and that was so important to me to show the actual reality, and not just these crazy standards that really impact people, or don’t show the real life of how things are”.
With Sculpted, she’s always been “honest when things don’t go right or how things are behind the scenes, and I hope to always be like that”.
Authenticity is at the core of who she is and she’s happy to show the journey, warts and all, and hopefully inspire others to be creative or start their own business (she has an entire shelf of letters from girls who’ve written to tell her how she’s inspired them).
“That’s a real responsibility that I carry with great pride, and one I’d never take for granted”.
Connolly is a visionary who thinks big, but even she is a little bit gobsmacked at the degree of success she’s achieved in the last decade. People stop her on the streets of Dublin and London to tell her that they love her products.
“When you have those moments, you go, ‘God, this is actually insane, what’s happened’. So as much as I wanted it all to happen and I believed that we could reach great heights, I think we’re still only at the beginning of where we’re going to go.”
- The 2026 Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon will take place on in Dublin City centre on Sunday, May 31 at 12.30pm. Register now at: vhiwomensminimarathon.ie.
- This year, Vhi is running a three-part training initiative designed to support women in the lead-up to the 2026 Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon. Each event is hosted by Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon ambassador and by fitness expert Nathalie Lennon.
- The next event is the 5km at Porterstown parkrun on Saturday, April 18, which Aimee will attend with fellow ambassadors, Vhi Women’s Nathalie Lennon and Clóda Scanlon. There will also be an 8km run in Kilkenny Castle on May 13.
- Register: Vhi Run Series at Eventbrite
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