What is the significance of henna?

Henna represents the beauty of life painted on one skin. All of Lakshmi’s henna paintings are described as using symbols from life and bending it into meaningful paintings. She uses flowers, elephants, eyes, and various important symbols unique to each client’s life story. For Lakshmi, her ability to do henna is her life, and she is so consumed by it that she feels everything is falling apart once she begins to lose appointments. But like the henna she paints, Lakshmi realizes that she can design her own life in the way that she wants it and moves forward with newfound inner beauty.