Objective:

To provide historical information about the use of vegetal resources in the elaboration of skin care products and to show some scientific facts that define topicality of this subject.

Method:

bibliographic search through the databases: Scopus, WOS, Google Scholar, The Plant List and other botanicals webs.

Results and discussion:

skin care and cosmetics are part of our daily life; hence the use of products for this purpose has significantly increased in recent years. From a recent bibliography, we referred 78 botanical taxa (algae, ferns and seed plants, fungi including). The aforementioned we related to historical facts and current scientific knowledge.

Conclusion:

Derived from plants are considered safe for health; they are a great source of secondary metabolites and have been and are raw material for skin care manufactured products.

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