18 Healing Recipes You Can Make With Shea Butter (2024)

With its moisturizing and anti-inflammatory properties, shea butter is a DIY beauty staple. Since it is deeply moisturizing and naturally anti-inflammatory [source], it can be used in lotions, body butters, soaps, and lip balms. Get our favorite healing shea butter recipes and give it a try.

Shea butter is one of the first ingredients you buy as a beauty DIYer. It has so many uses and a ton of benefits!

As an anti-inflammatory containing a little natural SPF, it makes an excellent ingredient in bug bite balms and even acne-fighting products. Shea butter is also rich in vitamins A, C, D, and E, along with fatty acids [source].

Wondering what to mix with shea butter for glowing skin that's super soft?

Here are our fave shea butter recipes for skin that will convince you to invest in this magic ingredient.

1. Shea Butter Hair Mask

This shea butter hair mask not only adds shine and needed moisture, but it can also help remedy dandruff and problems with a dry scalp. This is some serious conditioning!

2. Shea Butter Face Moisturizer

This is a recipe for a deeply hydrating shea butter face moisturizer from the book Plant-Powered Beauty. Your parched skin will gladly soak up all of the reparative butters and oils.

Plus, the vitamin E in shea butter helps protect against skin damage caused by free radicals [source], and the essential oils in the recipe target aging skin.

3. Shea Butter Body Wash

This homemade shea body wash includes both sunflower oil and shea butter for a super skin-soothing treat. Though this body wash is creamy, it still lathers nicely, and you can feel how the oils stay on your skin, creating a protective layer against the elements [source].

4. Shea Butter Lip Balm

Honey and shea lip balm is my fave, and this one uses a whole host of moisturizers: shea butter honey, almond oil, and olive oil. Shea butter is rich in fatty acids that help support the skin barrier to provide natural protection from the elements.

5. Shea Butter Heel Balm

No more chapped heels in your life with this shea butter-based balm! Improved with lavender oil, it's also great for a soothing foot massage before bed. You can use it overnight on your hands, too.

Apply a thick layer of lavender and shea butter balm to your hands, nails, and feet, and then put on a pair of socks. Crawl into bed and let the oils and shea butter work on repairing those dry areas so they will be silky smooth in the morning.

6. Shea Body Butter

Whipped body butter makes a super rich lotion that dry skin will love. And you only need two ingredients—just coconut oil and shea butter. Whipped shea butter also makes an amazing butter for babies'sensitive skin!

7. Shea Butter Soap

If your skin is dry, making your own gentle soap with a shea butter base is one of the best replacements for harsh soaps and cleansers. Shea butter has vitamins A and E to naturally protect and condition damaged skin, and this soap will leave your skin super soft instead of stripping away your body's natural oils.

8. Shea Butter Deodorant

Shea butter nourishes your underarms and gives this DIY pit paste some staying power (yes, even in hot weather). Use it to turn your deodorant into a whipped concoction or adeodorant lotion bar.

9. Shea Butter Eczema Balm

This healing homemade eczema balm recipe contains the best essential oils for eczema, plus raw honey and, of course, shea butter. Rich in vitamin A, shea butter is perfect for soothing skin conditions like eczema [source] or any kind of skin irritation.

10. Shea Butter Scrub Bars

These Lush-like Scrubee bars are exfoliating and moisturizing, all at the same time! If you love Lush copycat recipes, you'll also enjoy these knock-off DIY sugar scrub bars made with a blend of nourishing oils and exfoliating brown sugar that are a take on the Lush Scrubees.

11. Shea Butter Cheek + Lip Stain

It takes just 3 ingredients to create this lip and cheek stain, but it makes the prettiest color. Silky, creamy shea butter provides healing moisture and also gives the blush staying power to keep your cheeks looking rosy for hours.

12. Shea Butter Solid Perfume

This warm and sweet sandalwood vanilla DIY solid perfume has an anxiety-easing aroma. Sandalwood essential oil is known for its naturally calming effects [source]. And, instead of alcohol or scary chemical ingredients, this recipe uses light almond oil and the ever-silky shea butter.

So instead of drying and irritating your skin, it moisturizes and soothes, all while making you smell delightful. Toss it in your purse to enjoy whenever you'd like!

13. Shea Butter Body Scrub

Get the benefits of both body butter and body scrubs by including shea and coconut oil in this scrub recipe! The two are already a moisturizing dream team, but when mixed when antioxidant cocoa powder, they also smell like you're eating chocolate when you shower.

For a complete upgrade of your exfoliation process, you might want to give this whipped sugar scrub a try! You'll exfoliate, cleanse, and moisturize your skin, all in a single hand swipe.

14. Shea Butter Bath Melts

Inspired by the popular bath melts from Lush, these luxe bath melts are made with shea butter, but they melt in warm water, leaving a coat of hydrating oil on your skin. This particular version is ideal for winter skin, leaving it soft and helping you relax in the tub.

15. Shea Butter Muscle Rub

Muscle soreness is anything but pleasant and if you've been getting back into exercising after a long break, you know what I'm talking about. To make your own natural muscle rub, you will need cayenne, ginger, peppermint, beeswax, and, of course, shea butter for the extra moisture and aid with absorption.

16. Shea Butter Whipped Soap

This whipped soap recipe looks and feels magical on your skin, all thanks to a combination of shea butter, bar soap, glycerin, and emulsifying wax, among others. Reminiscent of whipped cream, whipped soap lathers, cleans, and hydrates, all at the same time.

17. Shea Butter Cream Highlighter

For a luminous glow that draws attention to your best features, homemade cream highlighter is the best option. We love making it ourselves because we get to customize it to perfection, for your skin type as well as your skin tone.

18. Shea Butter Homemade Foundation

This shea-based homemade foundation creates a silky smooth makeup base that not only provides coverage but also nourishes your skin at the same time. Natural pigments help you achieve the exact shade of your skin, never having to go crazy at those Sephora samples ever again.

What other recipes have you made with shea butter?

This post was medically reviewed by Dr. Rina Mary Allawh, M.D., a dermatologist who practices adult and pediatric medical dermatology, skin cancer treatment, and cosmetic dermatology. Learn more about Hello Glow's medical reviewers here. As always, this is not personal medical advice, and we recommend that you talk with your doctor.

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