Dora Baghriche: Weaving Stories of Scent from Memory and Words

Origin: Algiers, Algeria
Name variants: Dora Baghriche / Dora Baghriche-Arnaud
Affiliation: LUZI (joined as Master Perfumer in 2025)

Her grandmothers’ pastries, landscapes encountered while traveling, a book she is partway through reading. Dora Baghriche’s creativity is deeply connected to the things she encounters in everyday life. The exuberant fruit and flowers of Mon Paris; the skin-close musk (in Japanese) of Glossier You. Behind these very different expressions is a perfumer who gathers the details of life and translates them into scent.

When she was young, she dreamed of becoming a reporter who traveled the world telling stories. Now that she is a perfumer, that curiosity remains unchanged. Creating perfumes and editing books: through these two kinds of work, she conveys how richly smells contribute to our memories and emotions.

A Life in Perfumery
Literature and Scent: Le goût des senteurs and Le goût du luxe
By the Way…
Perfume Creations
References

A Life in Perfumery

Early Life

Dora was born in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, and grew up in Grasse, France. Her family included two grandmothers who worked as pastry chefs. When Issey Miyake’s perfumes were introduced in Japan, Algiers, Grasse, and her grandmothers were also described as part of the background that shaped her sensibility.^[1]

Pine nut cream, cinnamon, almonds. The childhood scent memories Dora names are, first of all, things found at the table and in the kitchen. Before encountering special fragrances enclosed in perfume bottles, she was probably becoming familiar with smells in places where people shared time together. Orange blossom is another important scent connected to those memories.

Knowing this background may make us look a little differently at the fruit and flowers in her later creations. Is citrus, for example, there only to add freshness? Does the sweetness of flowers also contain a food-like familiarity? There is no need to assume that every creation reproduces her childhood, but her sense of the closeness between food and flowers offers one way into understanding her work.

At the same time, Dora’s creative world does not stop at memories of home. Her former Firmenich profile also describes an interest in Mediterranean landscapes, Asia, New York, and Italy. Cherishing familiar memories while moving toward what she does not yet know: both have expanded her fragrant world.^[2]

The Path to Becoming a Perfumer

She did not set out to become a perfumer from the beginning. What strongly attracted Dora was writing. She says she wanted to become a writer or an international reporter, and has a curiosity about the people and stories behind events. Even after entering the world of scent, her interest in observing, thinking, and shaping something to communicate it never fell away.^[3]

She studied perfumery at ISIPCA in Versailles. Frank Voelkl, with whom she created You, also attended the school. An interview with the two explores the distance between acquiring knowledge at school and becoming able to create an original fragrance. Simply learning the names of materials does not set creation in motion. It took time to memorize smells, understand their properties, and gradually make the possibilities of combining them her own.^[4]

What is interesting is that even after gaining experience, she continued basic olfactory exercises. In the same interview, Dora describes a habit of smelling ten fragrance materials every day without looking at their names. She sets aside preconceptions and encounters materials she should already know afresh. That attitude also connects to her creative efforts to draw new expressions from familiar materials.

A sensitivity to stories and patient training through repeated encounters with raw materials: these two things are inseparable when considering Dora’s work. Turning a free-ranging idea into an actual fragrance requires concrete skills to support the images in words. Conversely, technique alone does not create a story that stays in someone’s memory. Her career has the interest of a search for expression that moves back and forth between the two.

The Course of Her Career

Dora built her career as a perfumer at Firmenich. After training in Geneva, she moved to New York, where she also gained experience under Harry Fremont. She subsequently based herself in Paris and began creating fine fragrances for various brands. Her progression through learning environments in Switzerland, New York, and Paris shows a path shaped by encounters with different cultures and ways of working.^[5]

Her creations from the early 2010s include Versace Vanitas, Olfactive Studio (in Japanese) Still Life, and L’Artisan Parfumeur Caligna. Perfumes for major fashion brands and fragrances taking their cues from photographs or landscapes: from an early stage, she was broadening her creative range by responding to briefs of different kinds.

In 2014, she created Cacharel Anaïs Anaïs Premier Délice with Olivier Cresp (in Japanese) and Oriflame Possess with Daphné Bugey. Collaboration was not an exceptional kind of work added midway through her career. Following Dora’s catalogue reveals that perfumes bearing her sole signature and work completing a fragrance with other perfumers have continued in parallel.

In 2016, she co-created Yves Saint Laurent (in Japanese) Mon Paris with Olivier Cresp and Harry Fremont. The following year, 2017, brought Glossier You with Frank Voelkl. Mon Paris paints fruit and flowers on a large scale, while You emphasizes closeness to the skin. The successive release of two creations that now represent her also shows why her work cannot be explained through a single fragrance family.

From 2018 to 2019, she was responsible for Chopard’s Happy Chopard series. Lemon Dulci, Felicia Roses, and Bigaradia form a collection expressing bright moods and the joy of life through citrus and flowers. How can the world of a jewelry brand be connected to a scent worn in everyday life? Here, too, we see the work of linking a client’s image to the expressions of raw materials.

Issey Miyake Rose & Rose and Wood & Wood, from 2019, were both co-created with Marie Salamagne. Together, they developed the paired themes of flowers and wood into the respective perfumes. The following year, 2020, she released the eau de parfum of Flower by Kenzo Poppy Bouquet with Alberto Morillas. Work that carries an existing brand forward while adding a new expression continued to accumulate.^[1]

In 2021, she moved into a field beyond fashion and cosmetics, creating Mastercard’s Priceless Passion and Priceless Optimism with Marie Salamagne. The initiative aimed to let people experience the brand through scent as well as sight and sound. The company’s interview describes how Dora invited Marie to collaborate and translated the two ideas of passion and optimism into fragrance.^[6]

In 2022 came Paco Rabanne Fame, created by four perfumers: Dora, Marie Salamagne, Alberto Morillas, and Fabrice Pellegrin. Narciso Rodriguez All of Me, with Daphné Bugey, followed in 2023. She also created Or de Moi and other fragrances for Infiniment Coty Paris in 2024, continuing her work across brands.

Her role within the company also changed. In January 2024, dsm-firmenich appointed five people, including Dora, as Principal Perfumers. Then, in 2025, she left the company where she had worked for many years and moved to the Swiss fragrance company LUZI. Both LUZI and Dora herself announced her arrival as Master Perfumer. It was a major milestone leading to her present affiliation.^[7] ^[8]

Perfumery Philosophy and Style

Memory and words are the first things that come to mind when considering Dora’s creativity. She records what she senses while traveling and in everyday life in a notebook, allowing those impressions to grow within her. Not just the smells themselves, but the mood and landscape of the moment become clues for expression. The curiosity of the girl who wanted to become a reporter seems to remain in a different form within the perfumer’s work.

However, linking that to an authorial identity that always produces the same scent makes her work harder to see. In interviews, Dora herself has expressed a reluctance to fit within a single style. Different briefs and brands require different answers. Even a familiar material can evoke a different emotion when brought together with another. That flexibility is another important characteristic.

When her creations are set side by side, fruit, flowers, musk, and soft woody scents appear repeatedly. Yet their roles are not fixed. In Mon Paris, patchouli supports the exuberance of fruit and flowers, while You centers on musky and ambery sensations. Fame layers incense over mango and jasmine. The interest of comparing works by the same perfumer lies less in their common ingredients than in differences in what is brought to the foreground and what is placed behind it.

Among the materials she names as favorites are rose, orange blossom, and iris. They are all familiar flowers, but each carries different memories and possibilities of expression. In creating Mastercard’s perfumes, she says she imagined journeys involving Moroccan roses and Sicilian oranges. This conveys how she builds a fragrance by moving between familiar memories and imagined travels.

Nor are the smells Dora finds in literature only pleasant ones. The smells of food, bodies, homes, and workplaces also bear the marks of how people live. In an interview with Nez, she described smells as “exhausteurs de vie,” words that can be understood as things that intensify the flavor of life. While speaking about the appeal of perfume, she also looks toward the world of smells beyond it.^[9]

The frequency of collaboration is also an important clue to her style. Neither You nor Mon Paris carries her signature alone. Encountering another perfumer’s material choices, or a different answer to the same challenge, can change where a fragrance goes. When appreciating Dora’s creations, looking not only for her individual character but also at which perfumers she worked with and which brands they created for gives a more three-dimensional sense of the distances between the works.

Representative Creations and Their Backgrounds

The following sections trace creations that give a sense of the breadth of Dora’s expression. The scent descriptions below take their cues from published notes and the creators’ statements. Comparisons between creations do not assert their actual formulas or how the perfumery work was divided.

Versace Vanitas (2010–2011)

Vanitas is essential to understanding Dora’s early catalogue. Lime, tiare, and freesia, with tonka bean and cedar indicated in the base: it is a clearly structured floral composition that moves from citrus into white flowers and then a soft woody trail. Sources give its release year as either 2010 or 2011.^[10]

What merits attention in this combination of notes is how it creates both brightness and an enveloping quality. The definition of lime and the fullness of flowers and tonka do not have textures that point in the same direction. From a light opening to a more rounded trail: following such contrasts reveals compositional interest that is missed by simply classifying it as a white floral perfume.

Citrus and woods also appear in the later Still Life, but pepper and rum become important there. Even where the groups of materials overlap, the scenes being depicted differ. Rather than treating the two works as a direct line of development, comparing how the same perfumer responds to different subjects reveals the breadth of expression present from early on.

Olfactive Studio Still Life / Still Life in Rio (2011 / 2016)

Olfactive Studio is a brand that brings photography and perfume together. Taking a photograph by Frédéric Lebain as its starting point, Dora’s Still Life develops a celebratory image into scent. Yuzu, elemi, and three kinds of pepper meet star anise and galbanum, with further layers of rum, cedar, and ambroxan.^[11]

The composition goes beyond citrus freshness by introducing notes suggestive of spice and alcohol. Its publicly described contours suggest an intention to connect sparkling brightness with a slightly warm trail. Rather than translating each subject in the photograph into a smell, it may be easier to understand the creation as expressing the atmosphere and mood sensed there through a different sense.

The photographer for Still Life in Rio is Flávio Veloso. The brand’s story concerns the city of Rio as it awakens. Yuzu, ginger, mint, lemon, and mandarin meet pepper and coconut water. Notes reminiscent of rum, copaiba, and leather support the trail. Sharing yuzu and rum with the first creation, it is a sequel that moves toward another landscape.^[12]

Although they share a title, the two creations do not redraw the same scene. Imagining time, temperature, and even the presence of a city from a still photograph: this pairing conveys an aspect of Dora’s work, receiving impressions that are not yet words and translating them into scent.

Yves Saint Laurent Mon Paris (2016)

Mon Paris is a joint creation by three perfumers: Olivier Cresp, Harry Fremont, and Dora. The fruitiness of strawberry, raspberry, and bergamot meets floral accords reminiscent of peony, jasmine, and datura. Patchouli, white musk, and ambrox are placed in the base.^[13]

The presence of patchouli should not be overlooked here. Taken on their own, the fruit and flowers suggest a sweet, exuberant fruity floral, but beneath them are elements supporting the fragrance’s outline. An exuberant upper register and a depth reminiscent of chypre (in Japanese): grasping both makes the structure of this creation easier to understand.

In a later interview, Dora recalled spending about two years creating it with Cresp, in a process aimed at expressing an image of sun-like flowers in a contemporary way. Co-creation does not produce an instant result simply by bringing together favorite materials. A creation also emerges through the time spent making repeated adjustments toward a shared image.^[14]

Mon Paris Couture, Mon Paris Intensément, Mon Paris Lumière, and others appeared later. One of the pleasures of branded perfumery is that a successful creation can give rise to variations in concentration, floral expression, and brightness. Even within the same named series, however, not every fragrance can be regarded as the work of one and the same perfumer. The original Mon Paris remains a creation bearing three joint signatures.

Glossier You (2017)

Glossier You was co-created with Frank Voelkl. Rather than a bouquet or a landscape encountered on a journey, the perfume aims for something closer to the wearer’s own skin. The brand identifies pink pepper, iris, ambrette, and ambrox as its core notes. The perfume’s name, too, addresses the wearer: You.^[15]

An interview about its development describes how creation began in a woody, musky direction suggesting intimacy and comfort. Voelkl, meanwhile, says that harmony alone is not interesting enough: texture and movement are also needed. Blending into the skin is not the same as nothing happening. Considering that distinction makes the intention behind You clearer.

The ambrox that appears here is a synthetic fragrance material (in Japanese) with a character reminiscent of ambergris. The approachability and natural-skin impression of You were not achieved simply by assembling plant-based materials. How can materials of different origins and characters be combined to create an impression close to the skin? That is where the perfumery interest of this creation lies.^[4]

Compared with Mon Paris, the way the central subject of the fragrance is positioned changes significantly. In the former, fruit and flowers set the scene; in the latter, the wearer takes center stage. Even with the same perfumer involved, the very way the perfume tells its story changes according to the sense of distance the brand seeks.

Chopard Happy Chopard Series (2018–2019)

Lemon Dulci, Felicia Roses, and Bigaradia form a collection that turns the joy of living into scent. Dora was chosen as the perfumer to give shape to the images of Chopard’s Caroline Scheufele. An interview on the brand’s side introduces both the aim of conveying bright emotions and an attentiveness to raw-material sourcing.^[16]

Lemon, rose, and bitter orange provide the points of entry to the three creations. They share a bright direction, but each focuses on a different material: the freshness of lemon, the exuberance of rose, and the richness surrounding orange flowers and fruit. They suggest that the same word, joy, can have various expressions, from lightness and excitement to relaxed contentment.

Bigaradia combines bitter orange and green mandarin with notes reminiscent of orange blossom, jasmine, and honey, followed by cedar, labdanum, black sesame, and patchouli. Rather than a simple freshness with citrus as the sole star, its composition encompasses floral sweetness and even a somewhat unexpected toasted, aromatic impression.^[17]

Knowing Dora’s childhood memories of pastries and orange blossom brings the closeness of food and flowers into focus here too. Rather than assuming that the memories were reproduced directly, however, attending to how familiar materials take on a different guise within a brand’s world may allow us to enjoy the three creations more freely.

Paco Rabanne Fame (2022)

Released in 2022, Fame is a joint creation by Dora, Marie Salamagne, Alberto Morillas, and Fabrice Pellegrin. The brand name at the time of release was Paco Rabanne. A combination of mango, jasmine, and incense forms the center of the fragrance.^[18]

The published composition suggests the idea of bringing accessible fruitiness together with the presence of incense. Mango and jasmine alone might be described as a bright fruity floral. Placing a texture that points in another direction alongside them creates contrast in the fragrance’s impression. The warmth of sandalwood and vanilla is also described as an element connecting the two.

Unlike the skin-close quality of You, this is work that takes on a fashion brand’s strong personality. Both are representative Dora creations, but neither can be fully explained through one perfumer’s preferences alone. Fame reveals the process by which a brand’s boldness and the collaboration of four perfumers converge in the contours of a single fragrance.

Narciso Rodriguez All of Me (2023)

All of Me was co-created by Dora and Daphné Bugey. It combines the musk emblematic of Narciso Rodriguez (in Japanese) perfumes with rose centifolia and geranium bourbon. The brand places an image of a woman in whom different aspects of individuality coexist behind the fragrance.^[19]

According to the official description, an accord using six kinds of musk, creamy and seeming to melt into the skin, plays an important role. Around it are floral expressions centered on rose and geranium, with sandalwood layered in as well. What merits attention is its treatment of musk not merely as a background to flowers, but as the center shaping the images of flowers and skin together.^[20]

What it shares with You is an interest in the relationship between musk and skin. All of Me, however, brings flowers more clearly to the foreground. Comparing the two may be more interesting if we ask what each wants to reveal through musk, rather than which is more like a musk perfume. Does it envelop the flowers or enhance the skin? That difference contributes to each perfume’s individuality.

Literature and Scent: Le goût des senteurs and Le goût du luxe

Dora’s interest in writing has led not only to inspiration for perfumery, but also to editing books. Le goût des senteurs was published in 2021 in Mercure de France’s Le goût de… series. It is an anthology gathering passages from literary works about smells, introduced by Dora, and offers a rather different point of entry from a specialist perfume book.^[21]

The collection contains 30 texts. Voices from different eras and positions appear side by side, from writers such as Proust and Baudelaire to contemporary writers and other creative figures. Perfumer Dominique Ropion also appears, but the book does not center on the insider language of the perfume industry. What do smells make people remember, notice, and understand about their relationship with the world? It follows these questions through literature.

It is also characteristic of Dora that the book does not simply collect familiar, beautiful scenes involving scent and memory. In the Nez interview, she describes how selecting the texts turned her attention to smells in everyday life, bodies, and workplaces. Like sweet floral scents, smells that are not necessarily pleasant also have the power to convey life. Experiences that fall through the gaps in perfume descriptions find a place here too.

Readers do not necessarily need to know the names of fragrance materials. The words in the book can call up the smells of places and people they know. Anyone with memories can speak about the sense of smell. Seen that way, the anthology also brings scent back from a difficult specialist domain into everyday life.

Dora also edited Le goût du luxe in the same series. Its subject is luxury. Looking beyond lavish objects to time, freedom, nature, and relationships with others, it gathers different forms of richness from literature. Rather than forcing values that change with time and circumstances into a single definition, it sets them alongside one another.^[22]

Placing these two books side by side reveals common ground between perfumery and editing: selecting materials or words already in the world, placing them next to one another, and generating a new way of feeling. Books and perfumes are different forms of expression, of course, but the work of deciding what to choose and how to combine it shares something. For Dora, literature is perhaps not a decoration added to perfume, but another way of observing the world.

By the Way…

Small episodes beyond her creations also offer glimpses of Dora’s sensibility.

She sometimes goes without perfume in everyday life. In the Mastercard interview, she says that she does not usually wear much fragrance herself, in order to keep her ideas open. Someone who creates many scents does not necessarily wear one particular scent all the time.
She values time spent traveling. Her interests extend beyond the Mediterranean to Asia, New York, and Italy. Time spent traveling alone and taking in impressions is also part of the background to her creativity.
She is surrounded by creative people from other fields. Her official profile describes friendships with musicians, people working in film, actors, and others involved in different forms of expression. Works and conversations outside perfume can also set her sensibility in motion.
If she were to create a perfume for someone. In an interview with Femina, she expressed an interest in actor Joaquin Phoenix and suggested using vetiver, carrot, and ginger. This was not an actual released creation, but part of a conversation imagining a fragrance from a person’s character.
When choosing perfume, the heart should be moved first. In the same interview, she compares encountering a perfume to falling in love. Analysis and knowledge deepen the pleasure, but the initial feeling of attraction matters too. That relationship to perfume also seems connected to her work inviting readers into scent through literature.^[14]

In 2025, she also created Ansongo with actor and film director Aïssa Maïga for Nez’s 1+1 series, a project bringing perfumers together with creative figures from other fields. Here, Maïga was not a co-perfumer but a creative partner who helped develop the inspiration for the fragrance. Dora’s work of listening to words and memories and connecting them to scent extends to dialogues such as this.^[23]

Perfume Creations

Representative creations are arranged chronologically. The “Co-perfumers / Notes” column gives credits other than Dora’s, while “—” means that the creation information consulted does not name a co-perfumer. Different concentrations or versions sharing a name are separated where necessary. This is not an exhaustive list of all her work.

Release Year	Brand	Creation	Co-perfumers / Notes
2010–2011	Versace	Vanitas	—
2011	Olfactive Studio	Still Life	—
2013	L’Artisan Parfumeur	Caligna	—
2014	Cacharel	Anaïs Anaïs Premier Délice	Olivier Cresp
2014	Oriflame	Possess	Daphné Bugey
2015	Gloria Vanderbilt	Minuit à New York	—
2015	Juicy Couture	I Am Juicy Couture	—
2016	Yves Saint Laurent	Mon Paris	Olivier Cresp, Harry Fremont
2016	Olfactive Studio	Still Life in Rio	—
2016	Kenzo	L’Eau par Kenzo Electric Wave pour Femme / pour Homme	—
2017	Glossier	Glossier You (You)	Frank Voelkl
2017	Viktor & Rolf	Magic Liquid Diamonds	—
2018	Chopard	Happy Chopard Lemon Dulci	—
2018	Chopard	Happy Chopard Felicia Roses	—
2018–2019	Eric Buterbaugh Florals	Oud Gardenia	—
2018–2019	Chopard	Happy Chopard Bigaradia	—
2019	Issey Miyake	L’Eau d’Issey Rose & Rose	Marie Salamagne
2019	Issey Miyake	L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme Wood & Wood	Marie Salamagne
2019	Lionel Richie	Hello (for women / for men)	—
2020	Giorgio Armani	Armani Privé Gardénia Antigua	—
2020	Kenzo	Flower by Kenzo Poppy Bouquet Eau de Parfum Florale	Alberto Morillas
2021	Victorinox	Forget Me Not	Julien Plos
2021	Mastercard	Priceless Passion / Priceless Optimism	Marie Salamagne
2022	Kenzo	Flower by Kenzo Poppy Bouquet Eau de Toilette	Alberto Morillas
2022	Paco Rabanne	Fame Eau de Parfum	Marie Salamagne, Alberto Morillas, Fabrice Pellegrin
2023	Narciso Rodriguez	All of Me Eau de Parfum	Daphné Bugey
2024	Infiniment Coty (in Japanese) Paris	Or de Moi	—
2024	Chopard	Leather Malaki	—
2025	Nez 1+1	Ansongo	Creative partner: Aïssa Maïga (actor and film director)
2025	Giorgio Armani	Armani Privé Iris Bleu	—

Creations given a range of years are those for which fragrance databases list different release years. For the two Mastercard fragrances, the brand’s 2021 announcement is used. Creation information was drawn from brand announcements, Fragrantica’s list of Dora Baghriche’s creations, and the individual fragrance sources below.