Perfume is one of the oldest crafts. In the ancient world, fragrance was burned as incense and steeped into oils and fats. Distillation, refined in the medieval Islamic world, made aromatic waters and oils possible; alcohol-based perfumes followed in Europe. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Grasse became the centre of raw-material production and eau de Cologne made light citrus fragrances fashionable. From the late nineteenth century, synthetic molecules transformed the craft into modern perfumery.

This is a brief outline, not a complete history. It concentrates on what is well documented and points to fuller articles on each turning point.

Fragrance in the ancient world

The word perfume is usually traced to the Latin per fumum, "through smoke" — a reminder that some of the earliest uses of fragrance were burned offerings. Resins such as frankincense and myrrh, which grow in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, were traded over long distances and burned in temples and homes across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.

Fragrance was also worn. Aromatic materials were steeped in oils and fats to make scented ointments, used for ritual, medicine, hygiene and pleasure in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. These were not perfumes as we know them — they had no alcohol and no distillation — but the impulse was the same.

Distillation and aromatic waters

Distillation — heating a material so that its aromatic part rises with steam and can be collected — was developed over centuries. Scholars in the medieval Islamic world refined it and used it to make rose water and aromatic oils on a large scale; the Persian physician and philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is often credited with improving the technique, although distillation itself is older. Rose water became a staple of cooking, medicine and hospitality, as it still is in much of the Middle East and South Asia. See Perfume Culture in the Middle East.

In East Asia, a different tradition grew around incense. In Japan, appreciating fragrant woods developed into kōdō, "the way of incense"; see Kōdō: The Japanese Way of Incense.

Alcohol-based perfume in Europe

Once alcohol could be distilled reliably, it became possible to dissolve aromatic materials in it and make perfumes that were light, clear and easy to apply. Scented waters circulated in Europe from the late Middle Ages, and by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries perfumers were serving royal courts, scenting gloves, fans and rooms as well as people.

For most of its history, perfume was something burned, steeped or distilled. Only recently has it been something designed molecule by molecule.

Grasse

The town of Grasse, in Provence, was known for tanning leather. Perfumed gloves became fashionable, and the region’s mild climate suited fragrant crops — jasmine, rose, tuberose, orange blossom, lavender. Over time the town shifted from leather to fragrance materials and became, for a long period, the centre of their production. Its perfume skills were inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2018. See Grasse: How a Tanning Town Became Perfume’s Capital.

Eau de Cologne

In the early eighteenth century, Italian perfumers settled in the German city of Cologne sold a light, citrus-and-herbal water that became famous across Europe as eau de Cologne. Its success made fresh, uplifting fragrance fashionable and gave the language a word that still causes confusion today. See The History of Eau de Cologne and Perfume vs Cologne.

The arrival of synthetic molecules

From the 1860s and 1870s, chemists began to make aromatic molecules in the laboratory — coumarin, which smells of hay and tonka bean, and vanillin, the main aromatic molecule of vanilla, among the first. Perfumers adopted them quickly. Houbigant’s Fougère Royale, of 1882, is usually cited as one of the first perfumes to use a synthetic material, and Guerlain’s Jicky, of 1889, as an early perfume combining natural and synthetic materials in a new, abstract way.

These materials did more than lower costs. They let perfumers create effects that no flower or wood could provide, and they gave rise to whole styles: the fougère structure, the aldehydic floral, and later the clean musks and transparent woods of today. See How Synthetic Molecules Created Modern Perfume.

The twentieth century: families and houses

As perfumery grew into an industry, fragrances came to be sorted into families — chypre perfumes, fougère, floral fragrances, amber fragrances and others — some named after a single influential perfume of their type. Fashion houses began to sell perfume alongside clothing, and the large designer fragrance became a fixture. Late in the century, small independent houses offering a different kind of perfumery grew in number; see Niche vs Designer Perfume.

The fragrance industry also began to regulate itself. The International Fragrance Association (IFRA), founded in 1973, publishes standards restricting certain materials, and cosmetics laws in many countries added labelling and safety rules. These changes are one reason older perfumes have been reformulated; see Why Perfumes Are Reformulated.

Perfume today

Modern perfumery draws on all of this at once: natural materials from farms around the world, synthetic molecules developed over a century and a half, regional traditions such as attar and oud that are now worn far from their origins, and an audience that can read about fragrance as never before. The language of the craft is still largely French; see French Perfume Terms, Translated. And the question of why some perfumes outlast their decade is the subject of our essay What Makes a Perfume Feel Timeless.

Common questions

Who invented perfume?

No one person. Fragrance was used in many ancient cultures independently. Particular techniques — distillation, alcohol-based perfume, synthetic molecules — each have their own histories and many contributors.

What was the first modern perfume?

There is no agreed answer. Fougère Royale (1882) and Jicky (1889) are the examples most often given, because of their use of synthetic materials.

Where does the word "perfume" come from?

It is usually traced to the Latin per fumum, "through smoke", by way of Italian and French.

Sources and further reading

UNESCO, The skills related to perfume in Pays de Grasse (inscribed 2018, decision 13.COM 10.B.14). The dates of individual perfumes and syntheses given here are those most widely cited in perfumery histories; some details are disputed between sources, and this article states the points on which they agree. For how classic structures such as the chypre and eau de Cologne are built, RUŌOD Lab’s chypre structure and eau de Cologne structure articles describe them from the perfumer’s bench.