LaReine Chabut Built the Community She Needed
A bestselling author, on-camera host and longtime wellness expert, she founded Momgevity in 2018 to give women the expert guidance, genuine connection and practical self-care tools that no one had yet put in one place - then rebuilt the brand from the ground up after the 2025 Palisades fire displaced her family and disrupted everything she had created.
There is a version of the wellness entrepreneur the industry trained us to expect: someone who packages aspirational content, chases trend cycles and keeps the message broad enough to offend no one. LaReine Chabut arrived from a different direction entirely. She came through years of work as a bestselling author, model, spokesperson and on-camera host, through a career spent translating health and lifestyle information into tools that real women could actually use, and through the kind of personal disruption - the 2025 Palisades fire that displaced her family and upended her Malibu-area operations - that forces a founder to decide, quickly and under pressure, what her company is really for. The answer she arrived at is Momgevity, and it is built on a conviction she has stated plainly: community is not an extra. It is part of wellness itself.
The professional foundation beneath that conviction is substantial. Chabut has spent her career at the intersection of fitness, wellness, media and publishing, building a platform as a bestselling author, on-camera host, model and spokesperson before channeling all of it into a single brand. She hosted "Focus on Feeling Better" wellness programming for MSN, reaching a multimillion-person audience. She has contributed to wellness and fitness media as an expert and thought leader. And in 2018, she launched Momgevity as a series of destination wellness getaways - curated experiences centered on movement, nutrition, beauty, mindset and community - that earned early national recognition when the Los Angeles Times included Momgevity's Mother's Day getaway among its recommended experiences that same year.
What she observed in those early gatherings became the engine of everything that followed. The conversations women had with one another - candid, relieved, often funny - turned out to be just as valuable as the expert sessions or the workouts. Women were not simply looking for better information. They were looking for a place where they did not have to navigate their health alone. That insight reshaped Momgevity from an events concept into something larger: a community and content platform, now extended nationally through a digital membership featuring live expert conversations, on-demand educational resources, movement programming, member check-ins, newsletters and brand partnerships aligned with the audience's actual needs.
Rebuilt after the fire
The most significant test of Chabut's leadership came not from a market shift or a competitive threat but from a wildfire. In January 2025, the Palisades fire displaced her family, rendered their home uninhabitable and disrupted the Malibu-area business operations that had anchored Momgevity's in-person programming. She has described the period as one of enormous personal uncertainty - navigating the immediate reality of displacement while simultaneously deciding what the future of her company would look like.
Her response was to move forward rather than wait. Instead of pausing until circumstances returned to something resembling normal, she accelerated Momgevity's transition to a digital-first model capable of serving women regardless of where they lived. The pivot, she has said, clarified something she had not fully seen before: Momgevity did not have to be limited by geography. The experience reinforced her belief that resilience is not about pretending challenges are easy - it is about continuing to make purposeful decisions while life is changing around you.
The result is a national digital community that preserves the human connection at Momgevity's core while removing the location dependency that had constrained its reach. Expert-led programming now covers the issues women are actively navigating: midlife metabolism, perimenopause, nutrition, thyroid health, GLP-1s, meditation, movement and recovery. The brand's guiding message - "Where Wellness Meets Community" - has not changed. The platform delivering it has grown considerably larger.
A career built on closing the gap
Chabut began her professional life in fitness, wellness, media and publishing, developing expertise across a range of formats before the throughline became clear. What she kept observing, across all of it, was a recurring gap: women were being told what they should do for their health, but they consistently lacked the time, the trusted information, the support and the community to make wellness feel genuinely achievable. That observation became the founding premise of Momgevity.
She launched the brand in 2018 with destination wellness getaways - experiences designed to let women step away from their routines, learn from credible experts, move their bodies and build real friendships in beautiful destinations. As the community grew, the format expanded into events, content, partnerships and ultimately the digital membership the brand operates today. Throughout that evolution, one principle has remained fixed: credibility matters. Chabut has said she believes in bringing in qualified experts, asking the questions women actually want answered and making information approachable rather than intimidating - because women are already overwhelmed by wellness trends and conflicting guidance.
Her media work has extended that mission to larger audiences. Hosting "Focus on Feeling Better" for MSN gave her a platform to reach a multimillion-person audience with wellness content grounded in the same expert-led, accessible approach she applies at Momgevity. She has also built philanthropy into the company model, with a portion of event proceeds supporting charitable organizations serving women, families, cancer patients and members of the music community.
The leadership philosophy behind the brand
Chabut has described her leadership approach in direct terms: be clear about the mission, collaborative about the path and willing to evolve when the facts change. She works with people who bring expertise she does not have and gives them room to contribute. She has also said that leaders set culture through what they consistently prioritize - communication, accountability, kindness, follow-through and respect for people's time.
When she is making decisions for Momgevity, she returns to a set of questions she has made explicit: Does this serve the community? Does it strengthen the brand? Is it sustainable? And does it move the company closer to the impact it wants to create? That framework, she has said, is what separates purposeful growth from activity that simply fills a calendar.
Her view of what separates great leaders from average ones is similarly grounded. Great leaders listen well, communicate clearly and make decisions even without perfect information. They are also willing to change their minds when new information emerges. Leadership, in her framing, is less about having every answer and more about creating an environment where the right questions can be asked and strong people can do their best work.
What comes next for Momgevity
The next chapter Chabut is building focuses on two parallel tracks: expanding Momgevity's national digital membership and growing its corporate wellness programming to better support female employees in the workplace. Expert-led education and practical resources are in development around perimenopause, menopause, metabolic health, stress, caregiving, strength and longevity - topics she has identified as directly affecting women's health, performance, confidence and retention at work.
Through corporate partnerships, Momgevity aims to bring live expert conversations, wellness education, member resources and community-based support directly to employees. The company is also continuing to expand short-form expert content, movement programming and longer-term brand partnerships with companies that align with its audience and mission. The goal, as she has stated it, is to scale Momgevity while preserving the trusted, personal sense of connection that has always been at the heart of the brand.
Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs reflects everything the Momgevity journey has taught her: start before everything feels perfect, pay attention to what your audience is actually asking for rather than what you originally planned to offer, build relationships before you need them and stay close to the reason you started. Most importantly, she has said, do not confuse changing your strategy with giving up on your vision. Some of the strongest businesses are built by founders willing to evolve.
This profile is reported from publicly available information and materials provided by LaReine Chabut. Nothing in this article is presented as a quotation unless it appears in quotation marks with attribution.