Maison Louis Marie: A Fragrance House Born of a Botanical Family Heritage Dating to 1792

“honour and continue my family heritage”
— Marie du Petit Thouars（Beauty News Daily）

Contents

Basic Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
What Defines the Brand
The Fragrance Lineup
Incidentally…

Basic Information

Founded: 2012 or 2013 (the exact year remains unconfirmed)

Founder: Marie du Petit Thouars, founder and creative director

CEO: Matthew Berkson, Marie’s husband, who joined the management of the brand in 2016

Official website: https://maisonlouismarie.com

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

The Story Begins in 1792, with a Botanist’s Exile

Maison Louis Marie’s brand story reaches back to a botanist caught in the upheavals of the French Revolution. Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars (1758–1831) was born into an aristocratic family in Anjou and grew up at Château de Boumois. Amid the turmoil of the French Revolution, after two years of imprisonment, he went into exile in Madagascar, Mauritius and Réunion in 1792.

During his ten years on the islands, he collected botanical specimens of at least 2,000 species, in particular classifying and depicting orchids in detail at a time when little had been recorded about them. His work describing 52 orchid species from Mauritius and 55 from Réunion later became an important botanical reference. Finally permitted to return to France in 1802, he donated a collection of around 2,000 botanical specimens to the natural history museum in Paris, and on April 10, 1820, he was elected to the prestigious Académie des Sciences.

Marie du Petit Thouars, who would later found Maison Louis Marie, is a descendant of this botanist named Louis-Marie. The official website succinctly expresses the brand’s roots with the phrase “A botanical tradition since 1792.”

A Childhood in Belgium: Formative Experiences among Plants and Scents

Marie grew up in Belgium, playing on her grandfather’s farm and experimenting with scents in her mother’s greenhouse.

The brand’s logo is based on a botanical drawing of the orchid Antidris dryochris by Marie’s ancestor Louis-Marie. The family drawing survives as the brand’s symbol.

From Fashion to Fragrance: An Unexpected Change of Career

As an adult, Marie first built a career in fashion. In Paris, she worked under Isabella Blow, the charismatic figure of British fashion, and subsequently served as a fashion editor at the Sunday Times in London.

She later moved to Los Angeles, leaving fashion behind to pursue a new path as a multimedia artist and fine-art photographer. Yet her love of scent and plants remained alive within her.

The impetus to establish a fragrance brand was profoundly personal.

“making candles as Christmas gifts for friends and family”
— Marie du Petit Thouars（Beauticate）

The handmade candles began as Christmas presents. They became popular among her friends, and requests for more gradually began to gather.

A Fragrance House Built from Scratch

Marie built her website herself, starting with six scents and 200 units.

They sold out; customers then requested oils and other formats.

The brand began scaling up in earnest after her husband, Matthew Berkson, joined its management in 2016. Matthew had previously run a Los Angeles-based manufacturing agency for luxury clothing brands, and that experience helped support the business’s expansion. In 2017, the brand entered Sephora, the major American beauty retail chain, and by the time of an interview in 2025, it had grown to be stocked in at least 600 boutiques and 400 Sephora stores.

Notably, the brand has never raised outside funding since its establishment.

In 2024, it opened its first flagship store at Platform LA, a shopping complex in Culver City, Los Angeles, and it now appears at prestige retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman and goop.

What Defines the Brand

Fragrance as a “Polaroid of Memory”

“like a little Polaroid of my childhood”
— Marie du Petit Thouars（Ethos）

Marie describes a mountain walk recalling the family’s summer house near Paris, then developing that memory with laboratory technicians.

Marie says that chasing trends for short-term growth can weaken relationships with core customers.

A Belief in Clean Beauty

All Maison Louis Marie products are made under a philosophy of “clean beauty,” using formulas the brand describes as “free of toxic ingredients,” with no animal-derived ingredients and no animal testing.

What is interesting here is Marie’s view of “clean.”

Marie discusses natural allergens and using synthetic musk to avoid animal-derived ingredients.

A Minimalist Aesthetic: Packaging and Logo

Its attention to packaging is equally consistent.

Overwhelming candle displays prompted Marie’s preference for simplicity. The brand says its packaging is made predominantly from glass and aluminum and its paper is FSC-certified.

A Commitment to Sustainability

Environmental initiatives are another of the brand’s important pillars.

As a member of 1% for the Planet, Maison Louis Marie donates 1% of sales to environmental organizations, and has been described as supporting the planting of around 10,000 trees each month through donations to the National Forest Foundation. It first obtained Climate Neutral certification, now The Climate Label, in 2021, and remained certified as of 2025.

The Fragrance Lineup

Maison Louis Marie’s fragrances span scent families such as “Earthy & Woody,” “Floral,” “Fresh,” “Gourmand,” and “Warm & Spicy.” Individual fragrances are offered in several formats, including eau de parfum, perfume oil, rollerball and candle. The perfume oils feature a distinctive formula based on safflower oil, which contains linoleic acid.

The following is the lineup of major fragrances that have been identified.

No.02 Le Long Fond
A woody fragrance that quietly deepens, with hinoki wood at the top, cedarwood and patchouli in the middle, and white musk at the base.

No.04 Bois de Balincourt: The brand’s signature creation
Top notes of sandalwood and cedarwood, middle notes of vetiver, nutmeg and cinnamon, and a base of amber wood. At the heart of the fragrance are memories of Marie wandering barefoot through French forests as a child. A bestseller since the brand’s early days, it is recorded as having launched in 2014.

No.09 Vallée de Farney
It opens with grapefruit, orange and black pepper, moves through cedarwood, patchouli and geranium, and settles into vetiver, amber and musk. A composition where fresh and earthy meet.

No.12 Bousval
Top notes of bergamot, cardamom and Valencia orange; middle notes of heliotrope, white ginger and petitgrain; and base notes of gilded amber, cedar noir and myrrh. It combines warmth with complexity.

No.13 Nouvelle Vague
Top notes of lily of the valley, coconut water and lemon; middle notes of Tuscan fig, tonka and agave; and a base of vetiver, amber and santal. Freshness coexists with subtle sweetness.

No.14 Icila
Inspired by the French word “ici,” meaning “here,” this fragrance expresses the importance of the present moment. Top notes of ruby grapefruit, mandarin leaf and jasmine; middle notes of Bulgarian rose, dark plum and osmanthus; and base notes of patchouli, vanilla flower and sakura blossom. A warm floral scent.

Antidris Cassis
According to BeautyMatter, this fragrance is named after the orchid Antidris dryochris, used in the brand’s logo. Top notes of cassis, bergamot and black pepper; a middle note of white rose; and base notes of oakmoss, musk and tonka.

The existence of No.15 Vanille Infinie has also been confirmed in addition to the fragrances above.