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

メゾン ルイ マリーの世界観と香水「No.04 Bois de Balincourt Eau de Parfum」を表現したブランドイメージ

「The inspiration to create Maison Louis Marie stemmed from a desire to honour and continue my family heritage deeply rooted in botany and natural exploration.」

“The idea of creating Maison Louis Marie came from a wish to honor and carry on my family’s tradition, deeply rooted in botany and the exploration of nature.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars, founder

Basic Information

Founded: 2012 or 2013 (sources give different years: Glossy states 2012, while SSENSE gives 2013. As the official website does not specify a founding year, it was not possible to confirm which is correct)

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.

Yet rather than becoming embittered by this harsh life in exile, he remained faithful to his calling as a botanist. 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 du Petit Thouars grew up in Belgium, spending her childhood playing on her grandfather’s farm. Her mother had a greenhouse, where the young Marie would experiment with the scents of different plants. The family also had a summer house outside Paris, and experiences of walking mountain paths surrounded by the scents of nature became a source of memories for her later fragrance creations.

「I grew up in nature. I need nature. If I don’t have it, I don’t feel well.」

“I grew up surrounded by nature. I need nature. Without it, I don’t feel at ease.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

「It’s my DNA. Everyday life is inspired from my history, my childhood, how I grew up in this family of botanists and scientists.」

“It is my DNA. My everyday life draws inspiration from my history, my childhood, and how I grew up in a family of botanists and scientists.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

For Marie, growing up in a family with botanical ancestry, observing, recording and respecting the world of plants was not a special activity but everyday life itself. The brand’s logo is also a drawing of an orchid fruit made by her ancestor Louis-Marie (according to BeautyMatter, an illustration of the discovery of an orchid called Antidris dryochris). A single botanical drawing has thus crossed at least two centuries to become the brand’s symbol.

「It’s the root of the company. It’s this heritage that I built everything on it.」

“That is the root of the company. I built everything on this heritage.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

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.

「I didn’t plan on getting into the fragrance business initially. It all started somewhat unexpectedly when I began making candles as Christmas gifts for friends and family. I wanted to create something personal and meaningful, so I crafted unique scents for the people close to me. To my surprise, the feedback was incredibly positive, and before I knew it, there was a growing demand for more.」

“I had not planned from the outset to go into the fragrance business. Everything began unexpectedly when I started making candles as Christmas presents for friends and family. I wanted to make something personal and meaningful, so I created original scents for the people close to me. To my surprise, the response was very positive, and before I knew it, more and more people were asking for them.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

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

「What started as a fun side project of making my own candles in my kitchen, mixing the wax and fragrance all myself, eventually became my fragrance house Maison Louis Marie.」

“What began as a fun side project, making my own candles in my kitchen and mixing all the wax and fragrance myself, eventually became my fragrance house, Maison Louis Marie.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

A Fragrance House Built from Scratch

Initially, Marie prepared six scents, built the website herself and launched the brand with 200 units of stock in a warehouse.

「I had six candles, fragrances. A stock of 200. I did the website myself, and I called my mom, and I said, ‘Mom, it’s gonna take me years to sell through all of this’.」

“I had six kinds of candles, six scents, and 200 units in stock. I made the website myself, called my mother and said, ‘Mom, it looks as though it will take years to sell all this.’”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

Friends reportedly told her, “No one will buy candles online without actually smelling them.” Yet all 200 sold out. Customer emails began to arrive, bringing a stream of requests: “Please turn my favorite candle into an oil,” “I want it in a rollerball,” and “What about soap and lotion too?”

「You just have to listen to your customer.」

“You simply have to listen to your customers.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

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.

「We want to be careful with the brand. We really want to create a legacy brand.」

“We want to nurture the brand carefully. We truly want to create a brand that will be passed on.”

— Matthew Berkson, CEO

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”

Maison Louis Marie has a distinctive philosophy of fragrance creation. Every scent is born from Marie’s own childhood memories.

「All the fragrances I launched in the beginning, they’re all personal memories, like a little Polaroid of my childhood.」

“All the fragrances I released at the beginning are personal memories, like little Polaroid photographs of my childhood.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

For example, the signature fragrance No.04 Bois de Balincourt grew out of memories of summer days when the young Marie ran barefoot and spent time in the forest among horses and trees. Ideas for new fragrances arrive unexpectedly. While walking in the mountains, a memory of the summer house outside Paris suddenly returns. Carrying that inspiration, she heads straight to the laboratory, where the work of breaking down and reconstructing the memory begins alongside fragrance specialists.

「Like cooking, you work on a recipe, and you just keep working to make it perfect. But it takes so much longer than cooking. It can take years to craft the perfect scent.」

“As with cooking, you develop a recipe and keep working on it until it is perfect. But it takes much longer than cooking. It can take years to finish the ideal scent.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

Invoking the fable of the tortoise and the hare, the brand deliberately chooses to grow slowly. Rather than pursuing short-term growth by chasing trends, it prioritizes protecting deep relationships with its core customers.

「I always say we’re the turtle. We go slow.」

“I always say we are the tortoise. We move slowly.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

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.”

「Sometimes you think that natural is better, but it’s just not.」

“Sometimes we think natural is better, but that is not necessarily the case.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

Even among natural materials, it avoids using essential oils with a high allergy risk. At the same time, it actively adopts ethical, safe synthetic fragrance materials. One example is using synthetic musk to avoid animal-derived musk ingredients. By taking the best of both natural and synthetic materials, the brand seeks to ensure quality, safety and ethics together, an approach that might be seen as a contemporary continuation of its ancestor’s spirit of botanical inquiry.

A Minimalist Aesthetic: Packaging and Logo

Its attention to packaging is equally consistent.

「I just wanted it to be very minimal, beautiful, simple.」

“I simply wanted it to be very minimal, beautiful and simple.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

Having felt overwhelmed by candle displays filled with neon colors and excessive decoration, Marie deliberately chose to keep the packaging simple. All oils, candles and perfumes come in glass containers, and labels use uncoated paper printed with soy ink. Packaging paper is 100% recyclable and FSC-certified. Marie’s words, “I want people to be drawn to the scent itself, not the packaging,” distill this minimalist aesthetic.

The logo imprinted on every product is an illustration of an orchid fruit drawn by her ancestor Louis-Marie. The family’s history is, quite literally, inscribed on every package.

A Commitment to Sustainability

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

「We try our best. I have a son, and I want to leave a better place.」

“We do our best. I have a son, and I want to leave a better place behind.”

— Marie du Petit Thouars

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 scents fall into four categories: “Earthy & Woody,” “Floral,” “Fresh,” 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.

Incidentally…

The Botanical Drawing behind the Logo
According to BeautyMatter, the logo imprinted on every Maison Louis Marie product is based on a drawing of an orchid called Antidris dryochris made by the ancestor Louis-Marie himself. This illustration also directly supplied the name of the perfume Antidris Cassis. The sequence from botanical drawing to logo to fragrance name is one example of how deeply the brand is tied to its historical origins.

A Connection with a “Close Friend from Belgium”
Marie names the Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens as one of the designers who has most influenced her, and says she has followed his career as an old friend from the same homeland since childhood. For Marie, with her deep roots in fashion, that aesthetic eye is strongly reflected in her fragrance brand’s visuals and design.

Her First Fragrance Experience, at Fifteen
The first perfume Marie bought for herself was reportedly Quartz by Molyneux, when she was fifteen. She recalls, “It was my first real perfume. I was so excited,” and says she switched to Chanel’s Cristalle at eighteen. Her strong attachment to scent “memories” may also be rooted in these experiences as a girl.

References