If it hadn’t been for a group of nuns, the Paul Penders company might not be here today. Paul Penders shares a wonderful story in his autobiography. Can you imagine being a man in a nunnery?

A little backstory first. Like many governments in Europe in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Paul’s home country of the Netherlands (Holland) instituted testing of cosmetics – on animals. When Paul brought in his shampoo formula for testing, he witnessed the horrific practice on a day that changed his life. He ran out of the laboratory determined to find a better way.

As it happened, he had two aunts who were nuns.

“Feeling rather down after the debacle at the animal testing labs, I received a call from my aunt soon after. A family member had spoken to her about my issues with the Dutch FDA and she called to offer support.

My Aunt Bertha or “Sister Bertha” as she was known within the order was a real character. She was an accomplished artist and sculptor in her own right and believed in standing up for the underdog. She spent plenty of time in Amsterdam befriending prostitutes as she felt that their spiritual needs shouldn’t be neglected because of their profession.

My aunt was a nun who lived with her sister (my other aunt and another nun!) in the convent in Baarle-Nassau; she had spoken to her colleagues about me and convinced the rest of the sisters that they needed to help the lab animals by testing my products on themselves!

I was so touched that my aunt had galvanized her convent to my cause and I hoped that my so-called ‘nun testing’ would be approved by the Dutch FDA.

Paul Penders traveled every week from Amsterdam to Barle-Nassau,
the border town between the Netherlands (NL) and Belgium (B),
to ‘people test’ his shampoo formulas on nuns.

For the next eight months I visited the Convent every week to participate in a solemn ritual. On my first visit to the Convent I was rather startled by the sight of the large group of nuns silently waiting for me. I thought that they looked like a bunch of penguins huddled in the corner.
I felt very privileged to be allowed into their cloistered world.

I was probably the only man who had ever seen their hair and was allowed to touch and wash their hair. I am very pleased to say that in the eight months of testing, no casualties were recorded and the nuns were very happy with the results!”

Paul's decision not to test his skincare on animals created a major controversy in Holland, the country of his birth. Despite this long-term, successful experiment, the products were never officially approved -- largely due to pressure exerted by powerful enemies from within both the Dutch bureaucracy and large cosmetic companies. The Dutch FDA delivered Paul an ultimatum: test your products on animals or close down the factory. His morals left him with only one choice: the search was now on for a more enlightened host nation. To his great joy, Paul found that the American FDA was open to his idea of non-animal tested cosmetics -- so the company moved to America.

Over time, animal testing of cosmetics became a mainstream issue, eventually influencing every major company. The Paul Penders company became world renowned for its courageous stance. Ironically, it was Holland that became the first country to comprehensively ban animal testing of cosmetics.

And it is thanks to Paul’s aunts and the nuns of Barle-Nassau that you can be certain that Paul Penders shampoos and organic herbal cosmetic formulas, featuring the special herbal concoction LevensEssentie created by his grandmother, are among the very best in the world.

Read the fascinating story of Paul’s life and career as an e-book, Pushing the Boundaries: The Paul Penders Story.

By Paul Penders with Teviot Fairservis.

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