Maya Njie Perfumes: London Niche Fragrances That Capture Memories in Scent

マイヤ・エンジャイの世界観と香水「Nordic Cedar Eau de Parfum 50ml」を表現したブランドイメージ

“Fragrance preserves fleeting moments and subtle details in memory that might otherwise slip from consciousness.”
— Maya Njie, from the official website

Basic Information

Founded: 2016
Founder: Maya Njie
Based in: Shoreditch, London (studio address: 91A Rivington Street, London EC2A 3AY)
Official website: https://www.mayanjie.com

A note on pronunciation: In English-speaking countries, the name is often pronounced “Maia N-Jai.”

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

A Girl with a Keen Nose, Born in an Industrial Swedish City

Maya Njie was born in Västerås, an industrial city about an hour from the Swedish capital, Stockholm. With a Gambian father and a Swedish mother, she stood at the intersection of two cultures from an early age.

Looking back on her childhood, Maya says:

“As a child, I had a very keen nose. I was passionate about collecting things that smelled good.”

Her interest in scent permeated every part of life. Candles, incense, beauty products, stationery and perfume: she says that “scent” was always close at hand in one form or another. She is also said to have learned to make scented candles as a child.

Moving to London at Nineteen, and Motherhood as a Turning Point

Having dreamed of moving to London since her teens, Maya traveled to Britain with her best friend Malva shortly after turning nineteen.

“I came here [to London] just after my nineteenth birthday. A place filled with art and music: that was what I was looking for.”

Soon after moving to London, she worked for the clothing brand Carhartt. Later, becoming a mother brought a decisive turning point in her career. Raising a child intensified her desire for creative work, and she enrolled in the surface design course at the University of the Arts London. There, she studied textile printing, wallpaper design, ceramics, fashion and photography.

Discovering Old Family Albums

Her university studies brought a turning point through the question of how to approach visual art. Wondering how best to convey the influences of her two cultures, Swedish and West African, Maya borrowed old family photo albums from the 1960s and 1970s from her mother’s family home. The photographs dated from before she was born, when her older sisters were still young.

As she scanned the photographs, extracted their colors and placed them on mood boards, Maya came to a realization.

“As I worked on this, I realized that one sense had been overlooked: smell. I became convinced that smell was the missing piece I needed to tell my story.”

The photographs showed everyday Swedish scenes: a small summer house surrounded by forest, her grandparents’ modest apartment visited on Sunday afternoons, the wedding of Uncle Lars and Aunt Irene. The question “What would the moment in this photograph have smelled like?” would become the heart of the brand.

Developing Her Craft at an Arts Hub, and Accidental “Market Research”

After graduating, Maya began working as building manager and front-of-house staff at The Laundry, an arts hub in Hackney, East London.

It was far from a creative job, but she continued her self-taught experiments in perfumery there. When she allowed the fragrances she blended to drift through reception, visiting artists and tenants began asking, one after another, “What is that scent?”

“At first I was making them for myself, but interest spread to friends, then friends of friends, and then strangers. I thought, ‘This could become something real.’ In a way, that word of mouth was my market research.”

She subsequently left The Laundry and invested the money from sales in safety assessment reports, raw materials and the knowledge needed to enter the fragrance market. In 2016, Maya Njie Perfumes was officially born.

The Encounter with Liberty, and the Road to a Tenth Anniversary

After launching the brand, Maya set herself the goal of entering Liberty, London’s long-established department store.

“Liberty was a benchmark I set early in my olfactory journey. When I was able to launch my brand there exclusively, it was a dream becoming reality.”

That dream came true in 2019. Being taken on by Liberty greatly increased the brand’s visibility, and Net-a-Porter subsequently began stocking it too. Its international presence also grew, with retailers in Sweden (Sniph), the United States (Muse Experiences, Tigerlily Perfumery and others) and Japan (NOSE SHOP).

The official website gives 2016 as the founding year, making 2026 the brand’s tenth anniversary. In a 2024 interview, however, Maya said that the business she had built from scratch would be “entering its tenth year next year.” This is best understood as a reflection on the journey of her business, including the work that preceded the brand’s establishment.

“It has taken years to get here, without any fundraising or outside investment. I now have staff who help with production and administration. I am grateful for what has been a journey of resilience and dedication.”

What Defines the Brand

The Philosophy of “Autobiographical Perfume,” Told through Smell

In a phrase, the philosophy behind Maya Njie Perfumes is “reconstructing memory.” The brand’s official website puts it this way:

“Maya Njie’s perfumes are blended as fragments of memory. They are scents that seek to capture the essence of the intimate and personal, and preserve its spirit. Fleeting moments and subtle details that might otherwise slip from consciousness are remembered here.”

Maya likens perfumery to “matching patterns and prints, or putting an outfit together.” Without specialist training in chemistry, she approaches raw materials by intuitively asking what she would like to place beside them, building a fragrance out of the dialogue between ingredients.

Completion can take months, and sometimes years.

“It takes months, sometimes years, to finish a perfume. That is where patience is needed. I like the maturation process. It slows down production, but you have to respect it and leave things to the magic of the raw materials.”

A Commitment to Materials: Natural and Synthetic in Harmony

Maya’s perfumes combine essential oils, aroma compounds (synthetic fragrance materials) and resins. Under a philosophy of “nature and science coming together,” she uses synthetic musk and synthetic ambergris, with no animal-derived ingredients whatsoever. All products are vegan and cruelty-free, with no animal testing.

Although labeled eau de parfum, the fragrances were reported in a 2020 introductory article to have an average oil concentration of 30%. The official website likewise explains that, while all its perfumes are labeled eau de parfum, they exceed the 8–20% concentration the site gives as a guide to that category. Concentration categories are not a uniform standard, and the way a scent is perceived also varies with the combination of materials and the wearer’s skin.

Bottle and Packaging Design: Colors Extracted from Photographs

Maya also designs all the packaging herself. Its color direction is based on colors picked directly from the photographs in those family albums. Simplicity and clarity, in keeping with a Scandinavian aesthetic, form the foundation. Each fragrance is accompanied by a corresponding photograph and color palette, bringing scent and image together as one story.

All production takes place at the London studio. Blending, filtering, hand-filling and labeling are carried out entirely by hand in small batches.

An Approach Free of Gender Boundaries

The entire collection is designed to be unisex. Maya’s response on this point is clear:

“I have no preconceptions about who you are, what you should be, or what you should like based on your gender. Fragrance is like color: if you like it, wear it.”

The Fragrance Lineup

The Five Founding Fragrances (2016)

The five fragrances introduced at the 2016 launch form the backbone of the brand.

Nordic Cedar
Maya’s first perfume composition and the brand’s bestseller. It was inspired by a family snapshot of women sitting on a bench and talking outside her grandfather’s allotment. Cardamom, Sweden’s most popular spice, leads a blend of patchouli, cedarwood and ambergris. Maya says, “The moment I got hold of cardamom, I wanted to combine it with patchouli and cedarwood. That power was all I needed.” In a 2024 Instagram post, she recalled, “I blended Nordic Cedar ten years ago. It was my first perfume, and I took pleasure in knowing that no one else had it.”

Vanilj
The name means “vanilla” in Swedish. Inspired by a photograph of her uncle and aunt’s wedding, this is a warmer, sweeter scent of “celebration.” It shares a structure with Nordic Cedar, while vanilla adds softness and warmth. Notes: vanilla, cardamom, patchouli, musk, cedarwood and amber.

Tobak
“Tobak” is Swedish for “tobacco.” It evokes both her grandfather smoking a pipe in a leather chair in his Swedish apartment and the scents of wood and tobacco drifting through Gambian craft markets: a fragrance in which two memories truly overlap.

“Tobak is a scent that reminds me both of my grandfather and of the woodworking and leatherwork markets in The Gambia. It connects my two worlds.”

Les Fleurs
The name “Les Fleurs” comes from Minnie Riperton’s 1970 song. A bright, green-tinged floral fragrance on the theme of foliage and gardens, it combines bergamot, neroli, fig and magnolia. Maya herself encourages even those who say they “do not usually like florals” to try it.

Tropica
Memories of beaches in The Gambia. Pineapple, coconut, fig, iris and rhubarb open the fragrance, which closes with sandalwood and ambergris. During the 2020 pandemic, it became the bestselling fragrance for its ability to evoke an “image of escape.”

Subsequent Developments

Voyeur Verde
A fragrance rooted in a holiday in southern Spain, inspired by a photograph of an abandoned car being reclaimed by nature. It opens with citrus notes of bergamot, mandarin and cypress, moves through the herbal & floral tones of fennel, iris and ylang-ylang, and leads into a drydown of cedarwood, frankincense and rosewood.

Syren (also presented as Syrus by some retailers) (limited release)
A floral composition inspired by the trail of jasmine flowering in late summer. Top notes of bergamot, peach and sea salt lead to a heart of jasmine sambac, lilac and clary sage. It finishes with ambergris, oakmoss, palisander rosewood, sandalwood and Virginian cedar.

Aethi Opum (2025)
The latest creation. Named after the West African fan palm, Borassus Aethiopum, it is composed as an homage to The Gambia. Based on Maya’s experiences during a 2022 visit to the country, it is also “a dedication to my mother.” Its notes are black pepper, wet earth, aidan fruit (a fruit used in West African cooking and medicine), thiouraye incense (churai, a traditional West African fumigating incense), vetiver, papyrus, coffee, iris, suede, frankincense, vanilla and leather.

Maya herself describes the fragrance in these poetic terms:

“After the rain stops, black pepper, aidan fruit and vanilla warm the earth along with the sunshine. The aromas of coffee, vetiver and leather mingle with thiouraye incense over layers of stone.”

It also became available at NOSE SHOP in Japan on February 27, 2026.

Incidentally…

  • After moving to London, Maya worked for the clothing brand Carhartt for several years. Although it may seem unrelated to fragrance, she quietly continued nurturing her interest in scent throughout that period.
  • The story of how her early trial fragrances attracted attention while drifting through reception, even as she insisted they were “not for sale,” and how that word of mouth effectively became market research, is repeatedly told in the media as the brand’s tale of “accidental entrepreneurship.”
  • Vetiver is one of the materials to which Maya feels most attached. She says its aromatic, smoky, earthy character evokes both her Swedish and Gambian roots at once.
  • She regularly holds perfumery workshops at her London studio. During a two-hour workshop, participants smell top, heart and base materials and ultimately take home a 20 ml perfume of their own.
  • She has said that her earliest childhood scent memory is “the smell of earth.” Whether natural soil in Sweden or the ground after rain in The Gambia, the smell of earth in these two contexts lies at the origin of her olfactory world.
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