Every lifestyle entrepreneur needs a home grand enough to serve as an aspirational backdrop. Martha Stewart had Turkey Hill, her historic farmhouse in Westport, Conn. Hannah Neeleman has Ballerina Farm, a 328-acre spread in Kamas, Utah.
Nabela Noor found such a place two years ago, an 11,000-square-foot white-brick Georgian Revival mansion, built in 1912, in this small city in southern Pennsylvania where she grew up.
Her social media followers, more than 12 million of them, have watched her paint the black shutters a dusty gray to soften the exterior. They have seen her cook a toddler-approved pasta recipe in the cloud-white kitchen. They have followed along as a local company, King Swings, built for her two daughters a playhouse that rises two stories above the backyard and features a deck and a balcony.
While giving me a tour of her home and grounds one recent morning, Noor felt the need to clarify something: “I didn’t come from money,” she said.
The daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh, Noor, 34, has been a full-time digital creator for a decade. Early on, she wore traditional South Asian clothing while building a modest following as a beauty influencer focused on body positivity and inclusivity.
In 2020, she began posting simple daily rituals, such as making iced coffee in a Mason jar or decorating a corner of her home. The series, which she called “#Pockets of Peace,” was a pandemic hit. She got serious about cooking, embraced her love of design and sought to “help people romanticize their lives,” as she put it.
Noor and her husband, Seth Martin, 36, might roll up their sleeves and plant 100 rose bushes to beautify the grounds, or show off their carriage house while wearing rubber wellies. This sort of thing is on display in the new Tubi series “Hosted by Nabela Noor.”
As on similar shows — think “Fixer Upper” and “Home Town” — the wife is the one with the personality and vision, and the husband is the cuddly second banana who does the heavy lifting. “Hosted by Nabela Noor” also features their kids, ages 4 and 3.
Kudzi Chikumbu, Tubi’s vice president of creator partnerships, said he was drawn to Noor’s TikTok videos and her connection to her audience. “I think of her as the modern, digital-first Martha Stewart,” Chikumbu said.
The mansion is the main setting of the show. It has Neoclassical columns and the kind of deep side porch where Roosevelts might have enjoyed summer lunches in the days before air-conditioning. Architectural Digest and People have chronicled her “light and bright” renovations.
Midway through the tour, Noor stepped onto the driveway barefoot. “I love to be grounded,” she said. She was dressed in her usual earth tones, accessorized with a Cartier watch and Cartier bracelets. She pointed toward a recent project — a Provençal-style courtyard with sand-colored paving stones installed by her husband. “Babe, I got this,” he told her after a contractor had quoted $40,000.
Over the past two years, Noor has changed her look: She lost 70 pounds, cut her hair and adopted a more tailored style. Her transformation coincided with her family’s move from a builder-grade house 15 minutes away to this three-story mansion with eight fireplaces and an elevator.
“I’m a woo-woo type of girl,” she said, noting that she felt a special connection to the house the first time she saw it. “I buy into energy, intentions, manifestations.”
Her mother, Luthfe Zeba Noor, was watching the girls in the wood-paneled family room. Her husband, who looks like a startled rabbit whenever he’s prompted to talk on camera, was outside, laying stone blocks in front of the carriage house. In a downstairs room, Noor’s younger sister, Neharika Noor, was editing footage on a laptop.
Neha, 22, is Noor’s editorial director, producer and the one responsible for the cinematic look of her TikToks. In the clips, Noor speaks in a near-whisper that heightens the tranquil, romantic vibe she’s selling. “No one can capture me the way she does,” Noor said of her sister.
We rode the elevator to the third floor, which was on its way to becoming a spa and exercise studio. One room contained two Pilates machines; another, a massage table and a vintage light fixture.
While showing off these amenities, Noor noted that, like herself, her husband had not come from a wealthy background. “I met him when he worked at AT&T, slinging cellphones,” she said.
She seemed to view the home spa with a practical eye: “I wouldn’t be my mother’s daughter if I didn’t maximize the mortgage.”
Her parents immigrated to Queens, N.Y., in 1991. Her father, Ahmed Ali Noor, who died last year, drove a taxi and worked the third shift at an ice cream factory before becoming the manager of retail stores in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Eventually, he opened a jewelry store at the West Manchester Mall in York.
The six Noor children grew up working for the family business. Nabela has recreated that experience as an influencer. In addition to her sister Neha, she works with her husband, who handles the operations side, and one of her older brothers, Tushar, who is a cameraman on the Tubi show.
“We were raised with a village mentality,” Noor said. “That’s what it took to get to this country. That’s a dynamic I grew up with.”
She planned to become a lawyer after college. But when she began making YouTube videos in 2010, she attracted an audience, especially women of color and plus-size women who felt ignored by beauty and fashion brands.
She said her mother and father were against her becoming a content creator — that is, until they took a trip to Bangladesh, where someone recognized them from the online videos and asked, “Are you Nabela Noor’s parents?”
Noor met Martin, the man who would become her husband, when she worked the register at a Philly cheesesteak shop owned by her older sister and he worked at the nearby AT&T store. One day, he got up the nerve to hand her his business card.
Noor had some difficulty persuading her parents, who are Muslim, to accept Martin, who is white and Christian. The couple experienced financial insecurity in the early years of their marriage as she tried to make it as a content creator.
“I remember watching my car get taken away and taking my wedding ring back to Kay Jewelers,” Noor said.
Like many who make a living online, Noor has shared private moments. She has posted about the challenges of her interfaith marriage, her insecurities around body image and the fertility struggles she went through before having her daughters.
She has also been a lightning rod for criticism. Online commenters have taken aim at her hushed manner of speaking and her shades-of-beige décor. The harshest comments have concerned her Muslim heritage and how she represents it.
Last year, a social media trend had people staging a Ralph Lauren Christmas. Taking that as her inspiration, Noor posted her own Ramadan celebration in the high-bourgeois style of the filmmaker Nancy Meyers, which drew criticism from observant Muslims who said she was whitewashing Islam.
Noor doesn’t have social media apps on her phone, she said, but she is aware enough of the criticism to find it unfair and perhaps racially coded. “People say, ‘You’re just showing a white-girl lifestyle,” she said as she clipped roses over her kitchen island. “We’re not asking white women to show relatability.”
“I love that I can share a house that people like me might not live in,” she continued. “There’s an appetite for aspirational content — people want to be transported.”
Regarding the Ramadan post, Noor said she was offering her own take on the Nancy Meyers aesthetic. With the wisdom and weariness of an O.G. influencer, she added, “If I’m not for you, I’m not for you.”
In the office near the kitchen, the aroma was French Toast mixed with Lemon Loaf, a pair of candles from the new Nabela Noor Home line.
“My audience was ready before I was ready myself,” Noor said of her move into a streaming series and retail goods. “‘We need a show. We need a product line.’ The content wasn’t filling them up anymore.”
Did she see herself leaving southern Pennsylvania for Montecito, Calif., or some other idyll where lifestyle experts typically reside? “Even if I do,” Noor said, “I would want something here.”
In the meantime, there are so many projects for her and her husband to do — and film — around the mansion. “Once I’ve done the carriage house, pool and garden, I will think, What’s next?” She flipped back her hair and said, as if testing out the tagline of a future Nabela Noor home magazine, “I just want to make your life beautiful.”
