Patricia de Nicolaï

Patricia de Nicolaï’s prestigious heritage has been both a great blessing and a somewhat surprising obstacle in her own impressive career. As a great-granddaughter of Pierre Guerlain and a niece to legendary master perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain, de Nicolaï was certainly blessed with both natural aptitude and intense exposure to the world of high-end fragrance. On the other hand, despite her legacy and an outstanding body of work as a student at ISIPCA in Versailles, de Nicolaï entered the industry in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, a time when gender discrimination in the French perfume industry was still rampant. Though she worked at Florasynth and later Quest, where she created the smash hit Lancôme Trésor, she opted to leave the big companies and found her own house, Parfums de Nicolaï, which she did alongside her husband Jean-Louis Michau in 1989. In addition to the scores of beloved fragrances she has created since then, she has also been inducted as a knight in the French Legion of Honour, and been named president of the Osmotheque, the prestigious archive of French perfume.