TWO best friends who have known each other since their school days have teamed up to open a new beauty salon in Cwmbran.

Lauren Brown and Rebekah Hennah, both 29 – who were both students at Llantarnam High School – brought their separate beauty businesses under one roof last November, and the pair haven’t looked back since.

“We were just chatting really about how things were working from home and heard about this place being available – from then it all happened really quickly,” Ms Brown told the Argus.

The duo work out of their newly refurbished salon on Llandowlais Street in the Two Locks area of the town.

Free Press Series: Rebekah Hennah and Lauren Brown opened the beauty salon in November last year.Rebekah Hennah and Lauren Brown opened the beauty salon in November last year.

Spread across two floors, Ms Brown offers a range of beauty treatments downstairs with Ms Hennah provides more specialised treatment such as skin and laser treatment upstairs.

It’s a huge step forward in boosting the pair’s businesses – which had previously been run from their own homes.

“I was working out of a cabin in my mum’s garden,” Ms Hennah said.

“I always knew I wanted to work for myself – I was lucky because I went through school, college then straight into a job.

“But you’re limited to what you can do when working from home and I obviously wanted to grow my business.

Free Press Series: Ms Hennah operates a more personal beauty experience upstairs.Ms Hennah operates a more personal beauty experience upstairs.

“This unit came up and we both thought we’d take a look and here we are – it’s the best thing both of us have done!”

The pair have been in the beauty world separately for almost ten years – but say working out of a joint space has meant both their businesses are booming.

“It’s been really good,” Ms Hennah added.

“I’d say it’s much busier now that we’re basically working together than when we were doing things separately.

Ms Brown said: “I find locals really like it – they’ve said how much they missed people being in the unit so that’s really nice – there’s a lot of local support.

Free Press Series: Ms Brown works out of the space downstairs. Ms Brown works out of the space downstairs.

“We’ve had people just pop in for a chat and a couple of girls who work in the offices across the road have been in.”

And there’s also the added bonus that the pair are able to do what they love, with their best friend never too far away.

“It’s nice that you’ve got that somebody you’re really close with,” Ms Hennah said.

“You can trust each other which is really important.”

Ms Brown said: “We work a lot of alternate days so there’s only one or two days where we’re together but it’s really nice.

“We both just want each other to do well so that constant support is always there.”

You can follow Ms Hennah's Facebook page here and Ms Brown's here.