Francesca Bianchi

About Francesca Bianchi

An Italian perfumer based in Amsterdam, Francesca Bianchi is the founder of her eponymous house, Francesca Bianchi Perfumes. She approaches perfumery as an art form, translating emotions and memories into scent.

Career

Her passion for perfume began in childhood, and she bought her first fragrance at fourteen. She studied art history, focusing on twentieth-century art, and later worked in art book publishing while living in Florence, Berlin, Luxembourg, and Amsterdam. It was in Amsterdam that she launched her own perfume line.

Creative Style & Philosophy

Bianchi's work is driven by a fascination with human intimacy and emotion. Sharing a perfume worn by someone she and her sister loved helped her recognise the emotional connections that scents can create. Her own compositions explore those moments when fragrance brings back a feeling or a memory. She uses both natural and synthetic materials without hierarchy, choosing each for its ability to express the intended idea.

In conversation, she singles out iris butter for its many facets: violet-like, green, earthy and powdery. Her interest in the material is also visual, recalling the opacity of a Rothko painting. This link between a raw material and an emotional or artistic impression helps explain how her earlier art-history studies remain connected with composition.

Signature Works

• *Sex and the Sea* — a sensual seaside memory rendered with coconut, immortelle, and ambergris.
• *Under My Skin* — an animalic leather softened by iris butter, evoking the scent of one's own skin.