FRAGONARD | From a Grasse Factory to a Family World of Flowers and Art

Sharing, craftsmanship and the joy of living.
Agnès Costa

Fragonard grew by bringing people into the work of making perfume. Eugène Fuchs founded the house in Grasse in 1926. Visitors could see production and buy a fragrance where it was made. Later generations opened the family’s collections of perfume bottles, paintings and Provençal costumes to the public. Perfumes, factories and museums remain connected parts of the same family enterprise.

Contents

Essential information
The founder and the making of the house
The house’s approach
References

Essential information

Brand: FRAGONARD
Founder: Eugène Fuchs
Established: 1926, Grasse, France
Namesake: the Grasse-born painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Official website: Fragonard Parfumeur

The founder and the making of the house

From a notary’s practice to a Grasse factory

After the First World War, Fuchs left his notary’s practice in Saint-Chamond for Grasse with his family. He acquired Cresp-Martinenq and Muraour, establishing Fragonard in 1926. The name honoured the local painter, the welcoming town and eighteenth-century art.

Holidaymakers on the Côte d’Azur came to Grasse to buy perfume. Fuchs invited them into the manufacturing workshops, pairing factory visits with direct sales. Seeing the work and taking home a fragrance became parts of the same experience.

A family business and a golden container

In 1929, Fuchs’s son Georges and son-in-law François Costa took over. Georges worked abroad while François remained in Grasse, as the house developed its trade in raw materials and bespoke fragrance compositions. François’s son Jean-François Costa later spent years working overseas before returning to Grasse in the late 1950s to succeed his father.

Émilie Costa, Fuchs’s daughter, assisted in his notary’s office before handling purchasing at the perfumery. During wartime glass shortages, she conceived gilding the factories’ aluminium containers. The practical solution became the golden estagnon, a perfume bottle that protects its contents from light.

Three sisters bring different studies into the house

Jean-François’s daughters, Anne, Agnès and Françoise, knew the perfume world from childhood. Agnès remembers Grasse’s roses and jasmine, alongside a father who disliked strong fragrance at home after working amid factory scents. Restraint in wearing perfume became, for her, a consideration for other people.

Each sister studied beyond the family business. Anne trained in medicine. Encouraged by a grandfather who was a notary, Agnès studied law, obtained an English degree and entered advertising. Françoise studied economics at the European Business School in Paris, London and Madrid.

When Agnès returned to Grasse at her father’s request in the 1980s, management was predominantly male. Joining the company became the beginning of building a different working arrangement with her sisters.

I persuaded my sister Françoise to join me.
Agnès Costa

Anne subsequently joined them. Responsibilities developed around their interests and expertise: Agnès worked on creation and business development, Françoise on administration and budgets, and Anne on cosmetics at the Èze factory. The inherited company gained the different skills each had acquired.

Opening a collection to other people

Jean-François’s interest in historic perfume containers and tools led to the perfume museum in Grasse in 1975. Hélène, the sisters’ mother, assembled Provençal costumes and jewellery that became the foundation of another museum in 1997. Art and clothing joined fragrance among the things the family shared with visitors. A museum of fashion and costume opened in Arles in 2025.

After their father died in 2012, Françoise consulted curators and scholars he had respected to assess the holdings and identify areas to strengthen. Inheriting comprehensive collections also gave her freedom to seek unusual, surprising objects. She described the pleasure of collecting this way:

it’s incredibly satisfying to acquire works to show them
Françoise Costa

Keeping family objects developed into the work of building collections with specialists and presenting them publicly. Alongside manufacture and retail, Fragonard’s inheritance includes the continuing task of opening those collections to new visitors.

The house’s approach

Connecting manufacture with the person who uses it

Production today takes place at the historic factory and the Fabrique des Fleurs in Grasse, and the factory-laboratory in Èze-Village. Visits introduce the work from raw-material quality control to finished-product packaging. Making its own products and selling them directly connects the early visitor experience with the present business.

Luxury is about quality, not cost.
Agnès Costa

That view informs the house’s commitment to accessible prices and containers designed for continued use. Today’s Fragonard Parfum 60 mL comes in a refillable golden aluminium estagnon. The historic form remains a working container for perfume used in daily life.

One person’s memory becomes another person’s fragrance

Orange blossom takes Agnès back to drinking orange-flower water with sugar as a child. For Daniela Andrier, the creator of Fleur d’Oranger, the original fragrance had a different personal starting point:

I actually created it for my son Étienne
Daniela Andrier

Agnès wore the fragrance and decided to sell it without altering the formula. Her memories of home met Andrier’s fragrance for her son in a perfume shared with others.

Choosing patterns and flowers

The colours and patterns of the packaging draw on Hélène’s historic costume collection. Agnès and Françoise extended that interest in craftsmanship to India, encountering embroidery and other techniques as they developed textiles for the house. Perfume boxes, clothing and household objects became connected through a shared interest in flowers and colour.

Within perfumery, Les Fleurs du Parfumeur brings Provençal flowers into everyday products, while Les Jardins de Fragonard explores gardens and journeys. Jasmin Perle de Thé takes its subject from green tea in an Andalusian garden filled with flowering jasmine. Local flowers and imagined gardens further afield offer different starting points for creation.

The annual flower project expanded into a bouquet with L’Air de Grasse for the house’s centenary in 2026. Grasse-born perfumer Karine Dubreuil-Sereni drew on memories of childhood gardens and scented hills for the eau de toilette. Mandarin leads into rose, peony and jasmine, followed by iris and patchouli. A hundred years into its history, the family house continues to turn memories of its birthplace into new fragrances.