Givaudan Perfumery School: History, Selection, and Training

For me, creation is the art of welcoming the unexpected.
Calice Becker

Smell an ingredient and name it. Then combine two ingredients in different proportions to see which comes to the fore and what changes. Learning at the Givaudan Perfumery School does not begin simply by looking at finished perfumes. It develops the ability to commit scents to memory and use those memories to create something new.

The teaching Jean Carles began at Roure in Grasse in 1946 passed through corporate mergers and relocations to become today’s Givaudan Perfumery School. Today, the school provides long-term training for people selected by the company. Its entry route differs from a fee-paying study-abroad course open to the public: beyond the training lies the practical work of designing fragrances for clients and consumers.

Key Facts
Perfumery Education Since Jean Carles
From Remembering Ingredients to Creating for Clients
Studying in France and Singapore
Applying Through Company Trainee Recruitment
1. A 2026 Recruitment Example for Japan
2. How Selection Relates to Work After Training
An Aside: A Rose Named for the Founder
Key Milestones
References

Key Facts

Name: Givaudan Perfumery School
Origins: Roure’s perfumery school in Grasse, founded by Jean Carles in 1946
Formation of the present educational organization: the Roure and Givaudan perfumery schools merged in 1992
Operator: fragrance company Givaudan
Main locations: Argenteuil, France, and Singapore
School director: Calice Becker, appointed in 2017
Educational role: training selected apprentices as perfumers, internal training, and customer education
Official information: Givaudan Perfumery School

Perfumery Education Since Jean Carles

Making a Method of Learning Ingredients Teachable

While working as a perfumer at Roure, Carles developed a systematic way to learn fragrance creation. In 1946, he began teaching young perfumers in Grasse. To pass his experience to the next generation, he made the order in which ingredients were smelled, the ways they were compared, and the steps in building formulas into a method that could be learned.

In his A Method of Creation in Perfumery, he advocates first learning the differences between ingredients and then comparing similar materials, rather than trying to imitate complex perfumes from the outset. Once students have grasped easily remembered characteristics, they move on to subtle distinctions. Repeated training bridges the gap between smelling something and identifying it correctly.

Formula exercises also progress in stages. Combining two materials in ratios such as nine to one and eight to two, for example, lets students compare the points at which one becomes more prominent or the balance changes. An accord is a coherent scent formed from several ingredients. Learning what happens when proportions change, rather than simply memorizing finished formulas, provides a foundation for imagining new accords.

At the school’s 80th anniversary in 2026, Becker explained an idea inherited from Carles: the perfumer’s work is not confined to reproducing formulas, but is about creation. Comparison, memory, and analysis are not merely techniques for repeating what already exists. They prepare perfumers to imagine a scent that does not yet exist and test it in trials.

Merging Two Schools and Moving to Argenteuil

Another strand began with Givaudan’s perfumery school in Vernier, Switzerland, in 1968. The fragrance companies Givaudan and Roure merged in 1991, and their educational organizations united the following year, in 1992. The company’s history is covered in our article on Givaudan.

The merged school moved from Grasse to Argenteuil, near Paris, in 1997. Eugénie Briot, who oversaw its educational program, has described the move as bringing students closer to the workplaces of creative perfumers. The distance narrowed between the room where scents were studied and the studios responding to clients’ requests.

Briot is an educator who researched the French perfume industry from historical, social, and technological perspectives and taught at university before taking responsibility for the school’s program. Perfumers need more than laboratory skills: they also need to understand society, fashion, culture, and how business works. Learning to consider the era in which a perfume emerges and the people it reaches complements the study of ingredients and formulas.

Former Students Teach the Next Generation

Alain Alchenberger, who led the school after Jean Guichard, entered perfumery after approaching the company as a chemical technician. In 1979, he was told that there was no job for a chemist, but that he could take the selection tests for the perfumery school. He passed the tests, began studying, and later worked on fragrances for detergents, shampoos, and soaps. He knew firsthand that a perfumer’s work extends beyond the perfume bottle.

In 2017, Becker became the school’s director, leading its teaching with Alchenberger’s support. Becker herself had studied perfumery at Roure in Grasse in 1985. After taking on her teaching role, she continued creating for selected clients.

Becker’s creations include Dior’s J’adore, Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommy Girl, and Kilian’s Intoxicated. She joined Givaudan in 2007, when it acquired Quest. After studying at Roure and building her creative experience, she returned to lead the school. Skills developed through work across companies and brands now contribute to the education of the next generation.

Interested in the creative processes of music, painting, and sculpture, Becker teaches both how to handle ingredients and how to develop creative ideas. Learning a framework is not about producing more people who make the same scents. It is about connecting each person’s sensibility with the techniques needed to give it tangible form.

From Remembering Ingredients to Creating for Clients

Learning Through Smell and Analyzing Combinations

The official account of the perfumer training describes a four-year program. Students begin by learning around 500 ingredients and developing their olfactory memory. They study natural materials and synthetic fragrance ingredients, then move on to basic accords and the structures of classic perfumes.

A 2016 account of teaching at the school described students working on morning exercises to smell and identify ingredients. To name a material, they had to connect yesterday’s olfactory memory with today’s perception. The accumulation of memory and observation leads to learning how to discern the role of materials within complex perfumes.

In Alchenberger’s explanation from the same period, students progressed through ingredients, accords, and analysis of finished perfumes before learning practical work in the company’s creative departments in their fourth year. This training is structured differently from an internship obtained by applying from an independent school to another company. Training and the company’s work are closely connected from the outset.

Learning from Gardens, Growing Regions, Art, and Markets

Students also smell flowers and plants in the school garden and practice expressing their scents in the laboratory. They move between the plant before them and an interpretation assembled from ingredients. The official description also mentions international internships, mentoring by experienced perfumers, visits to ingredient-growing regions, and encounters with opera, ballet, theater, and exhibitions.

The 2016 account described study visits to citrus-growing areas in Sicily and cistus-growing areas in Andalusia. Scent does not begin and end with a sample in a bottle. Knowing the places where ingredients grow, and paying attention to changes in cities and cultures, helps students consider what to express and whom to reach.

The school educates company employees and customers as well as perfumers. It also offers intensive training for internal evaluators, who assess fragrances. Evaluators connect clients’ requests and consumers’ responses with perfumers’ trials. Perfumer training and evaluator training are distinct forms of learning that contribute to fragrance creation within the same company.

Expanding the Possibilities for Trials with Carto

In 2019, Givaudan introduced Carto, an AI-powered creative support tool. Ingredients and formulas are manipulated on a large touchscreen linked to a robot that produces samples. The Odour Value Map, which organizes ingredients’ physicochemical properties and olfactory performance, also helps perfumers plan trials.

In June that year, the school announced that it would incorporate new digital tools into teaching and introduce a new approach for students entering in September. It had not simply frozen the teaching of 1946 in time. On the foundation of remembering and comparing ingredients, it added new ways of working and greater speed in making trials.

we, perfumers, bring the creative touch, the one most important part that can’t be replaced by any system.
Calice Becker (at the launch of Carto, 2019; excerpt)

Carto is a tool that makes creative experimentation easier. The perfumer still decides what to express and what to retain from a trial. Increasing the number of comparisons and iterations does not mean dispensing with the fundamentals.

Studying in France and Singapore

In 2013, Givaudan announced plans for a new site and perfumery school in Singapore, which opened in October 2015. The site also includes a creative center and production facilities. It was the school’s first campus outside France.

Study there connects knowledge of ingredients and perfumery techniques with an understanding of fragrance preferences in Asia-Pacific. The foods or plants that a given ingredient brings to mind vary with the places people have lived. Working for clients requires an understanding of those differences.

The official description of the sites outlines exchanges in which Singapore students spend a year in France and selected students from France spend a year in Singapore. Rather than a uniform requirement that every trainee make the same move, the two locations provide a structure for developing an understanding of different cultures and markets.

Applying Through Company Trainee Recruitment

A 2026 Recruitment Example for Japan

The entry route is through perfumer trainee vacancies advertised on Givaudan’s official careers website. Rather than a general study-abroad course in which tuition buys a place, this is training for people selected by the company according to future placements and business needs.

The Perfumery School Trainee – Japan vacancy (job ID 120168), checked on October 12, 2026, described four years of paid training, mainly in Argenteuil. It was intended for future perfumers working in Japan’s Consumer Products division. Requirements included at least a bachelor’s degree, fluency in English and Japanese, olfactory aptitude, creativity in any field, perseverance through a long learning process, and flexibility to relocate according to company needs.

This vacancy did not make a science major mandatory. Its language requirements were English and Japanese, but this does not mean that all classes at the school are always taught in those two languages. The languages actually used and the conditions of placement should be confirmed during selection for the particular position.

Although the vacancy text retained an October 31, 2026 deadline, the job page displayed the position as filled when checked on the same day. It should not be treated as an open vacancy; the careers website should be consulted for the next opportunity to apply.

How Selection Relates to Work After Training

A small number of trainees are selected each year. The 2026 vacancy listed education, languages, sensory ability, and creativity among its requirements, but did not publish every stage of testing and interviews as a common admissions procedure. Past intake numbers or accounts of selection experiences cannot simply be read as current acceptance rates or test content.

The same vacancy outlined progression, after successful completion of training, to a junior perfumer role at a creative center according to business needs and opportunities. It is a position linked to recruitment and training, not an unconditional employment guarantee for all applicants or everyone partway through the course.

The information checked on October 12, 2026 did not give a public tuition-fee schedule or the formal name of any university degree, national qualification, or completion certificate awarded. Junior perfumer here denotes a role within the company, not a degree or perfumer’s license. When considering schools, a useful starting point is to distinguish publicly recruited professional education from corporate trainee recruitment of this kind.

An Aside: A Rose Named for the Founder

In 2021, for the school’s 75th anniversary, a rose dedicated to Jean Carles was introduced in the Jardin des Senteurs, the fragrance garden in Argenteuil. Four generations of perfumers attended the gathering on September 17. The memory of education lives not only in ingredients learned in the classroom, but also in flowers smelled in the garden.

Key Milestones

1946: Jean Carles begins teaching perfumery at Roure in Grasse.
1968: Givaudan establishes a perfumery school in Vernier.
1991: Givaudan and Roure merge as companies.
1992: The two perfumery schools merge.
1997: The school moves from Grasse to Argenteuil.
2013: Plans are announced for a new Singapore site and perfumery school.
October 2015: The Singapore campus opens.
2016: The 70th anniversary includes an internal forum bringing together young perfumers and students.
2017: Calice Becker is appointed school director.
2019: Carto is announced in April. A new educational approach is announced in June and introduced for September’s incoming students.
2021: The 75th anniversary includes the presentation of a rose dedicated to the founder in the fragrance garden.
2026: The 80th anniversary. Becker celebrates the passing on of knowledge with several generations of perfumers.

Givaudan Perfumery School: Jean Carles’s Legacy, Selection, and Training