The Heart Behind Girley Bell’s

At just 15 years old, April was inseparable from her best friend. On the night of February 6, 1997, during what was supposed to be a simple sleepover, their lives changed forever.

Late that evening, they received a phone call from friends asking them to come downstairs. When April and her best friend reached the lobby of the building, they noticed a young girl outside who appeared angry and erratic.

“My instinct told me not to go outside,” April recalls. “But I did—because I saw my friend. And then I was attacked from behind.”

Confused and caught off guard, April found herself fighting someone without understanding why. She didn’t even realize she had been cut—until she saw her reflection in the glass.

“I thought I was scratched,” she said. “But then my friend started screaming, ‘You’re cut! You’re cut!’”

April would later receive 175 stitches to her face. The doctor believed the wounds were inflicted with a straight razor due to the precision of the lacerations.

Before the attack, people often told April how beautiful she was—commenting on her eyes and her high cheekbones. Afterward, the words changed. She was called Scarface.

“It was devastating,” April remembers. “Traumatizing. And the most painful part was that it came from my own friends.”

Despite the physical and emotional scars, April refused to let the incident define her future. In a moment that speaks volumes about her strength, she later met with her attacker—and chose forgiveness. Her attacker admitted the assault was driven by jealousy of April’s beauty.

That moment changed everything.

Instead of allowing jealousy, rage, and violence to shape her life, April chose healing. She wrote about her experience in her notebook—preparing herself to tell her story, not for sympathy, but for change.

“I wanted to share my story because violence and bullying are far too common in inner-city communities,” April explains. “It has to stop. This photoshoot was my first step in doing something about it.”

April not only overcame her trauma—she transformed it into purpose. She went on to serve her community as an EMT paramedic, dedicating herself to saving lives. She also founded her own makeup brand, Girley Bell’s, named after her grandmother—the woman who always reminded her that beauty is more than skin deep.

Her grandmother’s words never left her:

“Pretty is as pretty does.”

That truth became April’s compass.

“What’s inside is what makes you beautiful on the outside,” April says. “In today’s society, everyone is trying to change themselves to fit in—through surgery, trends, and comparison—forgetting that real beauty comes from within.”

Through Girley Bell’s, April is building more than a beauty brand. Her vision is to become a multinational reseller and retailer of Black-owned beauty products that celebrate authenticity, confidence, and self-worth.

From tragedy, April found purpose.
From scars, she found strength.
And from pain, she created beauty—with intention.