"The perfume that I offer you today, is a rewrite, which retains the classic French style, but clearer, more legible, more subtle and that gives pride, as in the past, to the materials; the flowers, the woods, more than to the concept." - Jean Claude Ellena
It all began with just a basket of flowers. One day in Paris in 1775, a young man, Jean-Francois Houbigant, hung a hand-painted sign of a basket of flowers over his little shop in rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. From the start, his fragrances found favor with royalty and the nobility. When Marie-Antoinette was executed by guillotine in 1793, she carried 3 vials of Houbigant perfume in her corsage to give her strength. In the spring of 1815, Napoleon had been in Paris for only three months, raised an army, and yet found time to shop at Houbigant. Two hundred years later, in 1973, Micheal Perris met the last descendant of the Houbigant family and began his involvement with the House of Houbigant. Years later, the Perris family became the owner of the House of Houbigant, and got the honor to try to put back together the historic brand.