Heidi Klum’s Model Daughter, Leni, Shares Vulnerable Makeup-Free Selfie of Her Acne

Leni Klum is learning how to embrace her skin one day at a time — and in front of 1.9 million Instagram followers.

The rising model and daughter of Heidi Klum took to the social media app on Monday with a candid makeup-free photo of her skin going through a flare-up.

The 19-year-old, who is also an interior design student in N.Y.C., didn’t caption the image. However, in the past, she has been vocal about accepting her skin, no matter what stage it's in. 

While chatting with PEOPLE in October, Leni admitted that she once succumbed to the negative stigmas around acne.  

“I feel like there is a thought behind having acne that you're not beautiful with it or it makes you look not as good as you could look,” she explained. “Then I realized, ‘Oh my God, this is normal.’ Everyone goes through it ... It's not bad if you have it. It's something that anyone can get and it's not your fault and it's hormonal.” 

The teen, who has fronted major campaigns alongside her mom for lingerie brand Intismissi, added that she used to face days when she didn’t want to leave the house until her “acne cleared up.”

Then, she realized she couldn’t let her skin control her life. That’s when she decided to post a photo of her acne on social media in the hopes of normalizing breakouts.  

Since then, she’s posted multiple close-up photos of her blemishes. Last summer, she uploaded a bare-faced selfie fresh out of the shower, and in January 2021, she got real about the “bad day” her skin was having with a zoomed-in picture captioned with the hashtags #nomakeup #nofilter #sowhat.

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Leni is also an open book when it comes to the topic of breaking stereotypes in the modeling industry. As a petite model standing a little over 5 feet, she told PEOPLE that she's learned to love her height, which hasn't stopped her from taking on some huge runway gigs.

"At the beginning, I didn't even think of doing runway — and now I love it. I want to do more. I don't think, and I never thought this, that you need to be a certain height or you need to look a certain way. I don't think there should be a certain standard, especially when it comes to height,” she said.