A Full Timeline of the Case Against Celebrity Aesthetician Sonya Dakar

30.06.2026, 18:33 allure.com

The former client who sued LA-based celebrity aesthetician Sonya Dakar—founder of an eponymous skin-care brand and a facialist who’s worked with celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Madonna—for allegedly burning her face is now claiming that Dakar will no longer be legally allowed to practice in California as of July 22. The client, Victoria Nelson, said she learned the news via a letter from the California State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.

This is a story years in the making; the procedure that allegedly caused the disfigurement occurred in 2021, though the client did not go public with her claims until 2025. And this isn’t the first time that controversy has swirled around Dakar, nor is this her first legal entanglement. Ahead, here’s everything we know so far about what’s going on with Sonya Dakar.

Our story begins with Nelson who claimed on social media that her face was “permanently damaged” after a treatment with Dakar that included a facial and chemical peel. Nelson’s first video, posted to TikTok in August 2025, detailed the entire experience, which she says started in April 2021. “It’s a pretty scarring—literally—experience for me,” Nelson said of her reluctance to share her story until over four years later. (Dakar has so far never issued a public statement addressing Nelson's allegations and did not respond to Allure's request for comment for this story.)

But when she was ready to share, Nelson shared everything. In a 13-minute video complete with photo evidence from the initial sessions and countless follow-ups, Nelson said had been seeing Dakar and using her products to help fight acne since 2019; she even called the aesthetician her “L.A. mom.” In 2021, she visited Dakar for a peel, which she said Dakar told her would have “no downtime or irritation.” A liquid was applied to Nelson’s forehead and cheeks, and when a drop of it landed below her brow, she felt an “immediate burning and stinging” sensation. After Nelson said her skin was on fire, Dakar rinsed the solution off, but Nelson was still in pain. She opened her phone camera to discover “what I thought looked like a white cream, but pretty quickly realized was my skin… burned.” In photos taken by Nelson immediately after the incident, a significant portion of one cheek appears to be burned, as well as a smaller area on the other cheek, a spot on her forehead, and the area beneath her brow. A person who saw Nelson on the street after the incident asked her if she had had acid thrown on her face; someone else told her to take legal action.

Nelson said Dakar told her that it would be okay and she could remedy the situation, so Nelson continued to see Dakar for 18 more sessions in 2021 and 12 sessions in 2022, including for what she called “pretty aggressive microneedling.” She said this further stressed and damaged her fragile skin. “All of these treatments were followed by diligent use of her products and check-ins with her,” Nelson said, adding that she continued to hope the aesthetician could fix the “P”-shaped white scarring on her cheek, spots on her forehead and cheeks, and other pigment and texture issues. “We were on this journey of ‘The next [treatment is] going to be it!’ She had promised me she was going to be able to fix it.”

However, Nelson still felt like she was “permanently disfigured,” and “to my knowledge, [Dakar] never consulted with another professional about the protocols or what she was doing to fix it.”

Nelson estimates she spent about $30,000 with Dakar after the initial burn. At a routine skin check with her dermatologist in 2022, she asked the doctor about the burn. “She was pretty immediately confused as to why Sonya hadn’t referred me to a burn unit or plastic surgeon when this initially happened and was really concerned as to what was in this peel,” Nelson said in her video. “In her experience, what an aesthetician would have [access to] shouldn’t do this level of damage. To this day, I still have no idea what was in the liquid.” (The procedures that an aesthetician’s license allows them to perform varies from state to state.The California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology doesn’t set a specific maximum acid concentration that aestheticians can use in a chemical peel, but their scope of practice includes only treatments that affect the “non-living, uppermost layers of facial skin.”) The dermatologist recommended six sessions of laser treatments to attempt to reverse the damage, which cost Nelson $8,000.

Nelson had stopped seeing Dakar while working with the dermatologist, but after Dakar insisted she return, Nelson visited her for 10 more sessions, spending an additional $10,000. Why did she go back? “I had this thought of, ‘She’s the only person on this planet who knew what happened in that room,’” Nelson explained in her video. “She’s the only one who could figure out a solution.” She noted that the two have not spoken since those final appointments.

After Nelson posted her video last summer, it racked up millions of views and nearly 19,000 comments—including some from people who had a similar experience with Dakar. Her story was also picked up by various publications, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

In December 2025, a few months after posting her initial video, Nelson filed a lawsuit against Dakar and a formal complaint to the California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. (She had previously filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Dakar in 2024, but it was dismissed.)

The complaint revealed more about Dakar’s past, notably that the celebrity aesthetician had already had her license revoked twice, including in 2009 after she reportedly “assaulted and attacked a board inspector” by attempting to bite her and pulling her hair.

In addition, complaints had been previously filed against Dakar for allegedly injuring a client and for use of a radiofrequency microneedling machine, which was not covered by her license. (In California, an aesthetician is not permitted to do microneedling on clients, because it penetrates the uppermost layers of the skin.) If you search Dakar’s name on California’s Board of Barbering and Cosmetology’s license database, you’ll see that her establishment license for the Sonya Dakar Skin Clinic in Beverly Hills has been revoked several times too, including in 2022 after a board inspector found “multiple code violations,” including devices like laser machines that the state considers “for the practice of medicine.”

Nelson’s lawsuit states that Dakar’s actions “constitute unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices, including practicing as an esthetician while unlicensed, performing treatments outside the scope of an esthetician’s license, engaging in deceptive billing, fabricating online reviews, and physically harming clients.” Nelson alleges that Dakar claimed she was “authorized to perform microneedling, extractions using a lancet, chemical peels, and other invasive procedures, but she was not,” and also “falsely represented to [Nelson] that she was authorized to conduct post-burn care.” The suit also claims that Nelson was charged for services and products she did not receive, as she said Dakar kept her credit card on file. In the lawsuit, Nelson states that she spent about $71,000 with Dakar and is seeking restitution.

If you’re not familiar, Dakar is a Los Angeles-based facialist who was particularly popular in the mid-2000s and also launched an eponymous skin-care line. The Sonya Dakar Drying Potion, a sulfur-based liquid for drying pimples, won an Allure Best of Beauty Award in 2008. When interviewed for a feature about top facialists in the February 2007 issue of Allure, Dakar spoke of her childhood in postwar Berlin and when asked about her skin type said it was “perfect.”

Five years after that interview, Dakar personally, and the parent company of her Beverly Hills clinic, filed for bankruptcy. In her filing, Dakar listed between $10 million and $50 million in assets, and between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities. “Much of that debt likely stems from the multiple lawsuits members of the Dakar family have brought against each other since 2008,” reported the Wall Street Journal at the time. Her clinic remained open. In 2020, two former employees filed a discrimination suit against Dakar, alleging that she would “openly make discriminatory comments against people who are African-American, Latinx and Muslim.”

Nelson’s latest suit is still ongoing, but on June 24, 2026 she posted a video update. In the video, Nelson, who appears to be reading an email (which is also shared as a screenshot in the video) from the Board, says that as of July 22, “Sonya Dakar can no longer legally practice or operate in the State of California. Both her aesthetician and establishment licenses are being surrendered to the California State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.” According to the video, Dakar is also required to deliver her pocket license and any wall certificates to the board and is not allowed to petition to reinstate her license for three years after July 22. Nelson decline to share the letter with Allure; we also reached out to the board directly but were not able to independently verify that Dakar's license had been surrendered.

It’s complicated. “There's relief, real relief, because this has been years of my life,” she tells Allure. “Years of appointments, medical treatments, legal processes, and just carrying this privately while also having to look at my face every single day and be reminded of what happened. So the fact that I can close the chapter on the administrative portion of this and that both of her licenses have been surrendered means something to me.” But ultimately, she adds, the decision doesn’t fix her face. “The damage is still there, physically and emotionally. I still wake up every morning and it's still there, I'm still at the dermatologist twice a week trying to make any semblance of progress on the physical scarring,” she e