MANE: Five Generations of Fragrance, from a Small French Distillery

“I am delighted to celebrate our 150th anniversary as a fully independent company”
— Jean Mane (2021, then Group President)

We may know a perfume’s name without knowing the company that created its scent. MANE works behind the scenes: extracting aromas from flowers, developing new materials through research, and translating a brand’s world into fragrance through its perfumers.

It began with a small distillery in southern France in 1871. A century and a half later, Jean Mane celebrated not only the company’s size but also its arrival at that milestone as an independent business. From Le Bar-sur-Loup to the world, and from flower processing to perfume creation, its journey brings together five generations of a family and the work of people who turn materials into usable aromas.

Key Facts
The Founder and the Company’s Origins
Ingredients, Technologies, Perfumers, and Their Creations
Training Perfumers within the Company
Milestones
References

Key Facts

Founded: 1871
Founder: Victor Mane
Headquarters: Le Bar-sur-Loup, France
Activities: Development and manufacture of fragrances, flavors for food and beverages, and aroma ingredients
Management: Family-owned by the Mane family. Samantha Mane has led the group since 2025
Official website: MANE

MANE plays a different role from a consumer perfume brand. It supplies fragrance formulas, materials, and manufacturing technologies to brands and manufacturers. Its work goes not only into perfumes sold in shops but also into cosmetics, detergents, foods, and beverages.

The Founder and the Company’s Origins

The Flowers of Le Bar-sur-Loup and a Small Distillery

In 1871, Victor Mane began making aromatic ingredients from surrounding flowers and plants in southern France, near Grasse. Before selling finished perfume under his own name, there was the work of extracting plant aromas and supplying them as materials.

Le Bar-sur-Loup, where the headquarters are located, lies near Grasse. The company’s history records milestones including headquarters there in 1907, a steam-distillation factory in 1930, the Notre-Dame district site in 1940, and La Sarrée in 1992. While expanding worldwide, it has continued to keep its base in this area.

Steam distillation carries aromatic plant compounds with steam, then cools and collects them. There is no need to project today’s proprietary technologies back onto the company’s founding. It began with a small operation processing local plants; over generations, its equipment, research, and range of usable materials grew.

Eugène, Gabriel, and Maurice Expand the Business

Victor’s sons Eugène and Gabriel modernized the business and advanced its international expansion. In 1959, Eugène’s son Maurice took over management, becoming the third generation after the founder.

During Maurice’s time, production capacity increased, research and analytical laboratories developed, and work expanded into food flavors. Aromatic ingredients obtained from plants became useful both in perfumes and in food. This is why perfume alone is not enough to understand MANE today.

The company’s overseas presence also grew. Operations in Japan began in 1956, followed by Brazil in 1963, Switzerland in 1969, and Mexico in 1975. The establishment of an organic chemistry division in 1971 and a biotechnology division in 1987 added the research and creation of molecules themselves to the processing of natural materials.

Meanwhile, the fine-fragrance division, responsible for perfumes worn on the skin, became a particular focus of development under Michel Mane from the early 1990s. A company long involved with materials, chemistry, and processes also began investing more strongly in translating a brand’s identity into a finished perfume.

Jean, Michel, and the Fifth Generation, Samantha

In 1995, Maurice moved to a supervisory role as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and his eldest son Jean became Group President. His second son Michel led the Americas. The brothers had different responsibilities: one for the group as a whole and the other for regional operations.

Jean was a business leader who worked in a chemist’s white coat. In 2009, he described himself as someone contributing to the company’s growth and continuity, with the goal of reaching its 150th anniversary as an independent business. He also believed that carrying the family name was not enough: recognition had to come from what one brought to the company and its colleagues.

Jean explained independence in terms of the ability to take a medium- and long-term view. Research takes time, and sourcing materials requires relationships. Family ownership was not simply about preserving the past but also about choosing the timescale on which such work could unfold.

The company celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2021. At the time, Jean’s daughter Samantha was responsible for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In 2025, Samantha, his eldest daughter, took over leadership of the group. Now in its fifth generation, the company remains family-owned.

Global Operations and Today’s Three Activities

Group sales for 2025 were €2.012 billion. This figure covers the entire group, including flavors, fragrances, and ingredients, rather than perfume alone. The official announcement for that year reported 54 research and development centers worldwide, two of which opened in 2025.

In 2024, flavors accounted for 52% of business, fragrances 40%, and ingredients 8%. Investment in research and development represented 7.7% of sales that year. Food aromas, scents for everyday products, and the materials supporting them coexist within the company.

Its Japanese business is not limited to delivering aromas created overseas. A new Tokyo headquarters opened in 2022, separating functions such as sales and purchasing from research and development. A new factory in Saku opened in 2024. Developing facilities for local research, customer collaboration, and production is the present form of its international expansion.

Ingredients, Technologies, Perfumers, and Their Creations

JUNGLE ESSENCE: Extracting a Material’s Aroma

MANE’s proprietary JUNGLE ESSENCE™ is an extraction technology using liquefied gases or supercritical fluids as solvents. A supercritical state occurs above particular temperature and pressure thresholds, combining properties of gases and liquids. Industrial production uses supercritical carbon dioxide, adjusting pressure, temperature, and contact time with the material to extract aromatic compounds.

The portable kit and industrial equipment operate under different conditions. The kit is designed for use at room temperature and pressures of up to ten bar. It also enables users to test a material’s aroma in the field and explore its potential. Perfumer Serge Majoullier describes the portable version as follows.

“a simpler version of what we do in full-scale production”
— Serge Majoullier

However, extracting a small quantity and consistently supplying a commercially usable ingredient are different stages. According to Majoullier, the process requires selecting growing regions, assessing yields, performance, and price, and adjusting production to maintain consistent quality despite annual changes in the raw material. Discovering a new aroma is followed by making it reliably producible.

Womanity: The Sweetness of Fig and the Saltiness of Caviar

Thierry Mugler’s Womanity, released in 2010, offers a concrete illustration of the relationship between research and perfume. Created by a MANE team, it contrasted fig and caviar accords: coherent aromatic impressions built from multiple materials.

The work captured not only fig leaves but also the fruit’s milky flesh and sweetness, combining them with a caviar impression suggestive of saltiness. Rather than layering sweetness upon sweetness, it sought a new expression between sweet and salty.

One of its creators, Mathilde Bijaoui, described the environment in which researchers develop new molecules and extraction methods.

“My luck at MANE is to have an important team of researchers constantly developing new molecules and finalizing new extraction techniques.”
— Mathilde Bijaoui

Bijaoui explains that JUNGLE ESSENCE made it possible to extract aromas from fig and caviar, and that she created Womanity with several MANE perfumers. Here, perfumers turned possibilities provided by research into a composition of sweetness and saltiness. Proprietary materials alone do not make a perfume: creative decisions about how to combine them are also necessary.

Like This: Tilda Swinton’s World and Ginger

Bijaoui also created Etat Libre d’Orange’s Like This with actor Tilda Swinton. Swinton was deeply involved, helping Bijaoui understand her world. One source of inspiration for Bijaoui was the color orange.

That idea led to ginger, immortelle, and an accord suggesting candied pumpkin. Formula features disclosed by MANE include ginger PURE JUNGLE ESSENCE™, immortelle and May rose absolutes, and the company’s proprietary musk materials. Extracts and synthetic ingredients together build the world of an individual person.

Womanity and Like This received the Perfumers’ Award and Experts’ Award, respectively, at the French fragrance awards in 2011. Seen together, they show that MANE’s technology does not produce one fixed olfactory style but serves different subjects and creative intentions.

Updating Fresh-Flower Processing: E-PURE and Co-Extraction

Introduced in 2020, E-PURE JUNGLE ESSENCE™ updates the idea behind enfleurage, in which fats absorb floral aromas, through a modern process. Delicate fresh flowers are immersed in natural vegetable oil near the fields, transferring their scent while preserving freshness, before JUNGLE ESSENCE extraction follows.

At launch, three extracts were introduced: jasmine grandiflorum, red champaca, and jasmine sambac. Even flowers grouped under the name jasmine have different contours, from animalic and fruity facets to impressions reminiscent of orange blossom. How fresh-flower characteristics are preserved changes the material placed in the perfumer’s hands.

In 2026, MANE’s ELIXIRIS received the Most Innovative Ingredient Award at the World Perfumery Congress. It is a co-distilled material made by processing orris roots with refined cedarwood essential oil. Rather than mixing two finished ingredients afterward, the combination is designed within the extraction process itself. Bringing powdery orris and wood together begins at the ingredient-making stage.

Perfumers’ Individuality and the Worlds Brands Want to Convey

MANE’s creative work cannot be explained by proprietary extracts alone. Its current official perfumer profiles include Bijaoui, Cécile Matton, Ralf Schwieger, Mathieu Nardin, and Violaine Collas. Each brings an individual approach to turning the expanded material choices supplied by research into scenes and textures.

For example, Maison Margiela’s Replica Bubble Bath, created by Collas at MANE, layers a soap-bubble accord with coconut milk, white musks, and rose materials. It aims to express the sensation of a warm bubble bath or being wrapped in a soft towel.

Matton moved from studying pharmacy into essential-oil research, trained at Givaudan-Roure, and worked at IFF in New York before joining MANE’s Paris creative team. Memories of markets, bread, and roads after rain in Africa, where she lived as a child, also informed her understanding of aromatic materials.

“Working with other perfumers helps keep ideas flowing and allows us to discover new accords.”
— Cécile Matton (translated from French)

Bringing a perfume closer to a brand’s wishes requires a shared language not only among perfumers but also with evaluators assessing the trials. MANE’s fine-fragrance work is a meeting point for ingredients, research, personal memories, and dialogue with customers.

Natural Materials, Chemistry, and Biotechnology

Even for a company that began with natural materials, the palette is not limited to plant extracts. MANE pursues analytical searches for new aromatic compounds, molecular development through organic chemistry, and biotechnology using enzymes and microorganisms in parallel. There is more than one way to expand the ingredients available to perfumers.

In 2011, it developed GREEN MOTION™, a tool for evaluating ingredients and fragrance compositions based on the twelve principles of green chemistry, an approach to reducing the environmental impact of chemicals and processes. Jean explains that it also helps perfumers improve formulas and share information with customers. It looks beyond whether a material is natural or synthetic to the processes by which it is made.

In 2026, MANE announced plans for an experimental garden at La Rose St Jean in collaboration with farmer Sébastien Rodriguez. It is an outdoor research space for cultivating plants and new hybrids and exploring proprietary extraction technologies. A company that began by processing flowers continues to renew the relationship between those who grow plants and those who extract their aromas.

Training Perfumers within the Company

Established in 1996, the MANE School of Perfumery is a program through which the company selects and trains its own talent. Recruitment conditions published in 2023 described selecting candidates with master’s-level studies in fragrance or related fields according to the company’s staffing plans. Specialist education is followed by training for practical work at MANE.

The basic training period is at least two years. Individually tailored courses cover natural materials, the chemistry of fragrance and cosmetic ingredients, technology, regulations, sensory evaluation, consumer preferences, and olfactory science. Junior perfumers then continue learning under senior perfumers through practical work and experience at creative centers around the world.

Knowing ingredients alone does not complete the work of perfumery. Perfumers must use them, consider the scents customers want, and repeat trials and evaluations. Education is therefore integrated into the company’s work, passing accumulated research and extraction expertise to the next generation of creators.

Milestones

Year	Event
1871	Victor Mane founds the business, making aromatic ingredients from local flowers and plants.
1907	The company history records its headquarters in Le Bar-sur-Loup.
1916	The generation of Eugène and Gabriel takes over, advancing modernization and international expansion.
1930	A steam-distillation factory is established.
1956	Expansion into Japan and the United States begins.
1959	Maurice takes over management, subsequently expanding production, research, and food flavors.
1963, 1969, and 1975	The company expands into Brazil, Switzerland, and Mexico, respectively.
1971 and 1987	The organic chemistry and biotechnology divisions are established, respectively.
Early 1990s	Development of fine fragrances becomes a priority under Michel Mane.
1992	The headquarters site moves to La Sarrée in Le Bar-sur-Loup.
1995	Jean becomes Group President, and Michel leads the Americas. Maurice becomes Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
1996	MANE’s perfumer training program is established.
2000	The JUNGLE ESSENCE kit is created. Trademarking of the industrial technology and kit develops during 2007–2009.
2003	The company signs the United Nations Global Compact.
2010 and 2011	Womanity is released and receives the French Perfumers’ Award the following year. Like This also receives the Experts’ Award in 2011.
2011	GREEN MOTION is developed.
2020	E-PURE JUNGLE ESSENCE is introduced.
2021	The company celebrates its 150th anniversary.
2022 and 2024	A new Tokyo headquarters opens, followed by a new Saku factory in 2024.
2025	Samantha, the fifth generation, takes over leadership of the group.
2026	Plans for an experimental garden are announced. ELIXIRIS receives the Most Innovative Ingredient Award at WPC.