When Katonya Breaux, the founder and chief executive of Unsun Cosmetics Inc., first noticed black spots on her skin, she freaked out. She immediately contacted her doctor, who laughed, prescribing one thing: sunscreen.

Though it seemed obvious, the experience made Ms. Breaux realize that there was a common misconception that African-American communities didn’t need sunscreen because of their skin tone. “Our melanin was everything,” she said at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival on Monday, referring to the pigment in skin that absorbs light and has long been misunderstood to completely protect dark skin from the sun.

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