The perfect storm of post-pandemic fragrance consumption and a powerful movement for racial equity ignited a major shift: consumers are actively seeking Black-owned fragrance houses. Pre-pandemic data shows that while Black consumers accounted for 23% of the entire fragrance market at $151 million in 2018, only 3% were Black-owned brands (data derived from NielsenIQ). From 2020-2023, multiple high-impact initiatives increased visibility and shelf-space, including Aurora James’s 15 Percent Pledge supported by Sephora, Ulta, Nordstrom and other major retailers. Sephora’s Accelerate program in 2021 narrowed their focus to highlighting BIPOC owned brands. Here are some of the most viral Black-owned fragrance brands churning out hit after hit.
- Dive deeper: It’s the Scent for Me: Black-Owned Fragrance Brands That Stand Out (Mvement)
The Black Fragrance Brands Changing the Scent Landscape
Chris Collins Is Building a New Fragrance Legacy
Founded by former Ralph Lauren model and brand ambassador, World of Chris Collins made history in 2022 as the first Black-owned fragrance brand stocked at Sephora. Collins cites Killian Hennessey as an early mentor when he decided to launch his own collection of fine fragrances. Collins did a stint at ISIPCA in Paris to learn the nuances of the fragrance industry.
Founded by former Ralph Lauren model and brand ambassador, World of Chris Collins made history in 2022 as the first Black-owned fragrance brand stocked at Sephora. World of Chris Collins
His signature boozy, seductive style translates into fragrances with sultry names like Long Kiss Goodnight and Sweet Taboo. Initially launched in 2022 at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, the fragrances are also now featured at ScentBird, Ministry of Scent and Nordstrom. You can also catch Collins carving new pathways at The Fragrance Foundation on the board of directors as the chair of the entrepreneurial committee. Rumor has it that the World of Chris Collins will be debuting a five-story brownstone perfumery and boutique in Harlem, NY soon.
From Candles to Sephora: How Forvr Mood Scaled Fast
Created by lifestyle and beauty content creator, Jackie Aina and her partner Denis Asamoah, Forvr Mood started as a home fragrance and candle brand during the COVID pandemic in 2020 and expanded into fine fragrance in 2024, selling over seven figures in a few weeks. Fragrances with cheeky names like NDA and Not Your Type are sold in colorful gem-like bottles at Sephora nationwide and Scentbird. In addition to being a brand founder, Aina is also one of the Executive Producers of Black Beauty Effect, a 3-part docuseries that debuted on the Black Experience on Xfinity channel, exploring the influence of Black women in culture, beauty, fashion and global trends. Aina has cultivated nearly 9 million followers across all social media platforms. Her “lavishly Jackie” content has evolved from make-up tutorials to disrupting and redefining the standard of representation in the beauty industry to documentaries and beyond.
How Brown Girl Jane Went From CBD to Fine Fragrance
Malaika Jones, named one of the 100 most powerful women by Entrepreneur Magazine, co-founded Brown Girl Jane in 2019 with fellow Spelman Alumnae Nia Jones and Tai Beauchamp. While initially starting out with CBD skin care and wellness products, they pivoted to fine fragrance in 2021, partnering with then-Firmenich and stocked at Nordstrom, surpassing $2 million in annual sales. In 2023, they were accepted into the Sephora Accelerate cohort, launching online at Sephora the following year. They also won the inaugural Sephora $100,000 Beauty Grant in partnership with The Fifteen Percent Pledge, solidifying their position as the first Black woman-owned fine fragrance brand on Sephora. Recent highlights include a new Limited Edition Halo scent in partnership with Barbie inspired by the 25th anniversary of Barbie in The Nutcracker, featuring gourmand scent notes like raspberry, marshmallow and brown sugar—selling out full-sized bottles in mere hours. Fans of this clean, vegan and cruelty-free perfumery are looking forward to more glitter and gold from Brown Girl Jane.
How Moodeaux Is Building Fragrance Staying Power
In the same Sephora 2023 Accelerate cohort was Moodeaux, founded by former investigative journalist Brianna Arps. Moodeaux received six-figure funding from Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition prize, an initiative that bridges opportunity and wealth disparities by providing early-stage capital as well as funding from Slauson & Co, an investment firm backing Black founders who leverage their lived experience as their competitive advantage. Their support helped them achieve 172% and 228% year-over-year growth. They made history as the first Black-owned fragrance brand at Urban Outfitters and Credo Beauty. Their 30% concentration gives their scents longevity on the skin and based on all their accolades like Hypebae Beauty Awards "Best Fragrance" and "Emerging Brand,” (2023) and Essence Best in Black Beauty Awards (2023), they have the essence for what it takes to maintain longevity in the market place.
Oui the People Takes Its Caribbean Roots to Fragrance
While Oui the People was initially launched as a body care brand in 2017, they were also part of the Sephora 2023 Accelerate cohort and made their official debut online and in over 250 stores nationwide under the “Next Big Thing” display. Founded by Guyanese-American Karen Young, the brand raised $3 million from New Age Capital in 2022 to secure the resources needed to meet the initial demands of production and provide a runway to scale. Oui the People launched its first fine fragrance collection in 2025, which draws deep inspiration from Young’s scent culture growing up in the Caribbean. Scents like Island Milk, Window Fruit, Caribbean Skin, and Sunday Lime have become #PerfumeTok favorites.
Harlem Candle Co. Makes Its Sephora Move
Harlem Candle Co., founded in 2014 by luxury travel expert Teri Johnson, creates luxury candles inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and legendary musical icons like Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. While initially hand-pouring the candles in her Harlem kitchen, Johnson grew the business and expanded into fine fragrance with the Harlem Perfume Co. in 2022. The brand received a major boost in sales when its “Purple Love” candle, inspired by author James Baldwin, was selected for Oprah’s Favorite things in 2023. The brand built a strong presence at Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, but after completing the Sephora Accelerate program in 2024 and debuting on Sephora's platform in 2025, Johnson decided to step away from those initial retailers to channel her $2 million annual revenue into direct-to-consumer sales and her partnership with Sephora. In August of this year, she was featured prominently on the Jumbotron at Barclays Center in partnership with JustWorks, which celebrates NYC's small-business community.
How Funmi Monet Turned Scent Memories Into Influxious
Influxious is a fine fragrance house founded by ISIPCA-trained fragrance content creator Funmi Monet, whose brand made its Sephora debut in July 2026. Her journey from Sephora Squad Ambassador in 2022 and Mentor in 2023 to the Sephora Accelerate program in 2024-2025 culminated in the launch of her own fragrance house at Sephora online, followed by an expansion into select stores. Drawing inspiration from her Nigerian-American heritage and personal scent memories, Monet brings a distinct cultural perspective to contemporary perfumery. Her fragrance, Well Loved, reinterprets the traditional skin scent through the warmth and familiarity of shea butter, an ingredient deeply connected to beauty and body care rituals across the African diaspora.
Working alongside Mane perfumer Gino Percontino and Senegalese-French fragrance development manager Elisa Gueye, Monet refined the shea butter accord to capture the comforting intimacy of well-moisturized skin.
“This is my skin scent reimagined as a Black woman, and it leans into the shea butter. It feels like a skin scent that’s different from the traditional versions that we typically get in the fragrance space,” Monet explains.
The fragrance also draws on one of Monet’s earliest scent memories: the comforting embrace of her mother.
“I remember how she smelled when she hugged me,” she recalls.
That emotional connection continues to resonate with consumers, who frequently describe Well Loved as a warm hug from someone who loves them.
Reference Is Building a New Cultural Scent Map
Co-founded in San Francisco by Christina Eison, Reference is an upcoming fine fragrance and beauty house built on Syncretic Beauty. Its inaugural collection of five eau de parfums is organized around the Seven Terrains, a geographic framework for exploring cultural scentscapes through ingredients and storytelling. Along with its fragrances, the brand also founded Reference Worldwide Radio and curated music and collaborations with global artists and musicians.
The brand previewed its collection at ScentFest SF and will launch in Fall 2026. It is one of the 12 emerging beauty brands that are part of the 10th-anniversary Sephora Accelerate.
Each of the 12 brand founders receives six-months of mentorship, financial modeling, merchandising support, supplier networking, and an invitation to the Sephora Impact Summit. Additionally, it is eligible to apply for the $100,000 Sephora Beauty Grant, offered in partnership with the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which supports underrepresented Black beauty founders with capital. The ultimate ambition of the incubator is to build a dependable pipeline, giving founders the potential to secure a highly desired retail spot on Sephora's physical and online stores platforms.
House of Iyrah Makes Fragrance Personal
For House of Iyrah founder and CEO Samira Mbang, fragrance is a deeply personal language. Growing up, she served as a dedicated “nose” and the scent guide for her anosmic mother. This invisible bond guides how the House of Iyrah treats its audience, creating fragrance as more than a product—a vehicle for genuine human connection. At fragrance shows, retailer events, and pop-ups, House of Iyrah prioritizes opportunities where Mbang can meet her community face-to-face for conversations, hugs and moments of connection. This collaborative spirit shapes the brand’s future, co-creating with its most loyal customers and members of its the insiders group, who get early access to new drops and even the opportunity to test early iterations of new fragrances.
Ourside Turns Community Support Into Fragrance Momentum
Funded by a $10,000 grant from Harvard Business School, sisters Keta and Kaja Burke-Williams originally launched a proof-of-concept brand called Aspen Apothecary in 2020. They strategically rebranded in 2022 as Ourside and simultaneously raised $500,000 and got selected to Ulta Beauty’s MUSE Accelerator. Ourside is an award-winning fragrance house handcrafted in small batches in the Bronx, New York and focuses on clean, vegan and cruelty-free unisex perfumes inspired by memories, daydreams and multicultural identity. Cementing its status as a niche luxury player, the brand is Bergdorf Goodman’s exclusive Black female-founded fragrance brand and is offered nationwide at Credo Beauty.
Where Fragrance Finds Its Community
One of the benefits of any incubator program is community. Almost every founder who goes through a program, speaks very highly of other founders they meet. Behind the scenes, community platforms like BlackPerfumers,the Black Fragrance Association and local smell clubs are nurturing future perfumers and founders.
BlackPerfumers is a cross-industry initiative and platform to highlight Black-owned fragrance brands, increase representation and inspire the pursuit of STEM/STEAM careers within the fragrance industry. Founded in 2020 by Elle N., a New Orleans-based perfumer, scent artist and writer, the organization has more than 200 members as well as an educational arm called Legacy Scent Academy, a youth program supported by Black Fragrance Association, works with Black perfumers who teach fragrance design to students aged 12 to 19. The Academy is supported by the Black Fragrance Association, an advocacy and support organization powered by Brown Sugar Babe, which celebrates, empowers and elevates Black talent in the heavily gate-kept fragrance industry. They provide mentorship, training, development programs and business pathways for Black-owned brands to excel in the commercial market place.
Maekaeda Gibbons is the powerhouse of Brown Sugar Babes, a booming $20 million luxury body care empire. Driven by a mission to create high-end, expensive brands more accessible, she launched the brand in 2018 and ignited a beauty revolution. Her meteoric success is fueled by a ride-or-die community obsessed with her “inspired-by” oil formulas blended into a signature base of five nourishing carrier oils—avocado, grapeseed, sweet almond, olive and castor oil. Taking the viral buzz into the real world, the brand launched its immersive Scent Soirée Pop Up Experience Tour packing 20 cities nationwide in 2025 and returning for an exclusive seven-city tour in 2026. Between its high-fashion events and opening a stunning new flagship boutique in Atlanta, GA, Brown Sugar Babes is redefining glamorous self-care routines.
The Colors is a Paris-based, multicultural creative agency founded by Haweya Mohamed and co-founder Ammin Youssouf to elevate voices from the African diaspora through orchestrating high-profile showcases with organizations like The Fragrance Foundation, Paris Perfume Week by Nez and Pitti Fragranze. Beyond championing independent initiatives like BlackPerfumers.com, The Colors has joined forces with UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) to debut Fragrance for Impact, dedicated to improving the well being of women and farming communities that are the very source of the fragrance supply chain.
One of the brands amplified by The Colors is Tayshaba, which is making history as the first Franco-Sudanese fragrance brand. Founded by French-trained perfumer Maiada El Khalifa, Tayshaba house creates modern, genderless fragrances inspired by Sudan’s centuries old scent rituals crafted with classical French techniques. Built on the ethos of “Fierce Beauty,” and bridging cultures through olfactive scent stories, Tayshaba honors the untamed spirit of independence and ancestral tribes. The brand is deeply rooted in purpose and donates a percentage of sales each month to support families affected by the war in Sudan.
Several Black-owned scent clubs and experiential collectives are making waves across the country and reshaping how collectors relate to fragrance outside the traditional retail landscape. Leading the shift is The Scent Social Club, founded by Asia Grant, a New York based perfumer and host of the Refinery 29 x eos Nose Dive podcast, who guides curious noses on the Nolita Perfume Tour—a weekly, curated “scent matchmaking” and walking tour of Manhattan’s finest boutiques.
Cultivating highly engaged spaces for olfactory storytelling, Black Girl Perfume Club by Taylyn Washington-Harmon and the The Bay Area Scent Collective (BASC) operate as intentional, community-first scent circles. Travaulya Wallace’s “Spray It Loud & Proud” fragrance parties evolved from retail pop-up collaborations with Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom into a high-energy venture combining karaoke, fragrance and dancing! Her sold-out events are proving that fragrance lovers want to be wowed beyond the scent strip and that customer loyalty is built outside traditional retail.
Black Nose Lab serves at the Atlanta headquarters for Savoir Faire, the acclaimed brand founded by perfumer Chris Davis, AKA Chris Classic. Black Nose Lab is a curated sensory bar featuring more than 50 Black-owned brands globally for perfume lovers to discover and explore. The Parlour by MUSE (Modern Urban Sensory Experiences), founded by Kimberly Waters, offers another premier Black-owned fragrance destination. The luxury fragrance showcase operates out of a private historic brownstone townhouse in Harlem, New York City and stocks global niche fragrance brands.
At FragCon (Global Fragrance Convention) in Houston, Swirl Works, a Silicon Valley fragrance house with Caribbean roots, sold out of its vanilla flights, with Rich and Sheer the most popular selections.Swirl Works
For larger-scale gatherings, the inaugural FragCon (Global Fragrance Convention) made waves in Houston, Texas in August 2026. Launched by Nigerian-American entrepreneur Clara Igwala-Anumege, the convention drew 100 exhibitors and more than 4,000 fragrance enthusiasts. Brands experienced phenomenal demand, including Swirl Works, a Silicon Valley fragrance house with Caribbean roots, sold out of its vanilla flights, with Rich and Sheer the most popular selections.
Meanwhile, Ghanaian house Maison Yusif Fragrance not only sold out of its entire inventory, it took home the prestigious award for Best African Heritage Fragrance House. Rounding out the event’s big wins, Lucky Armstrong, perfumer and founder of Maison Chanceux, won the esteemed Rising Star award.
Speaking of awards…
The Award-Winning Black Fragrance Houses Making Their Mark
Aethi Opum, crafted by Swedish-Gambian perfumer, Maya Njie, captured the Artisan Category at the the Art and Olfaction Awards held in Athens, Greece. Her gorgeous atmospheric scent features black pepper, wet earth, leather, frankincense, vanilla and traditional thiouraye/churai, (inspired by a family-recipe incense blend of Gowé roots, dried flowers and wood chips soaked in natural oils and perfumes) and captures her West African scentcape, folklore, and the minerality of sun-warmed earth right after rain.
Aethi Opum, crafted by Swedish-Gambian perfumer, Maya Njie, captured the Artisan Category at the the Art and Olfaction Awards held in Athens, Greece. Maya Njie
On another front, Verdant by Ilé Olomu by founder Bawo Ijirigho, won this year’s people’s choice Art and Olfaction Award in the Independent Category, an homage to the deliciously humble green plantain, a cultural staple across the diaspora. The brand celebrates the founder’s Nigerian-American and Itsekiri heritage and the legacy of his great-grand uncle, Chief Nana Olomu.
Jamaican-American perfumer Na-Moya Lawrence is a perfumer and co-founder of indie fragrance house Samar, which won the Art and Olfaction Award in 2024 for its juicy citrus fragrance creation, "Grove is in the Heart." The previous year, its beloved tomato leaf-heavy scent, "Garden Heaux" was named a finalist.
Bringing decades of industry expertise to the table, Travertine Atelier founder and chief perfumer Terry Carter serves as premier judge and evaluator for the Art and Olfaction Awards. His forward-thinking approach to scent is reflected in his notable appointment as maker-in-residence at the Craft Contemporary Museum as well as pioneering collaborator with Osmo Labs. Armed with elite training from France’s prestigious ISIPCA Composition Avancée de Parfumerie program, Carter translates his creative wizardry into custom, high-end scents for private clienteles and corporate giants—including Sony, Whole Foods Market, Four Seasons Hotels, and MGM Hotels and Resorts.
As the founder and CEO of Octavia Morgan Los Angeles, Octavia Morgan made history as the first Black-woman-owned prestige fragrance brand launched nationwide at Ulta Beauty. The brand’s luxury, gender-inclusive, and clean fragrances gained traction through Ulta’s MUSE Accelerator in 2023, which helped Morgan secure financial backing. She received an official proclamation from Los Angeles County honoring her entrepreneurial journey and industry representation. She was recently named to the prestigious BeautyMatter NEXT50 List, which honors emerging brands shaping the future of the beauty industry.
Overlooked No Longer
For too long, mainstream beauty industries overlooked the profound cultural and economic impact of the Black community, especially in the luxury fragrance space. Now, a major transformation is underway. As the cultural push for racial equity continues to reshape retail, these trailblazing founders and brands are ensuring that the future of fine fragrance is as inclusive as it is unforgettable. Smart retailers with high-velocity incubator programs that provide critical launchpads for viral, Black-founded independent fragrance houses, prove that elevating diverse perspectives are beyond socially impactful. Strategic backing does more than just champion equity; it allows brands to introduce rich, new dynamic multi-dimensional narratives that cultivate deep audience connection while unlocking a highly lucrative commercial frontier.
