Homebrew (brew) is not the same as apt-get, and does not have the same packages. In particular, build-essential is not a Homebrew package. The package build-essential is a Debian package. From apt show build-essential,
If you do not plan to build Debian packages, you don’t need this
package. Starting withdpkg(>= 1.14.18) this package is required
for building Debian packages.This package contains an informational list of packages which are
considered essential for building Debian packages. This package also
depends on the packages on that list, to make it easy to have the
build-essential packages installed.
You can install compilers and supporting utilities with Xcode. First, download Xcode from the Mac App Store, and then run this in the terminal to install Xcode’s command-line tools:
$ xcode-select --install
(Although, if you already have Homebrew installed, you probably have Xcode and its command-line tools.)