About RHR

How It All Started

My way into home fragrance happened partly by chance and partly by calling, a calling that perhaps was waiting to be uncovered and heeded.

In the summer of 2007, while I was in the midst of an interview process for a design director position at a major apparel company, I was working on a short-term consulting project for an interior designer, focusing on textiles and furniture. She was very talented and quirky, and about a month into it, I noticed a tray of candles on the “inspiration table” of ongoing projects. She had been collecting candles for quite some time, and they were neatly arranged by color, an elegant degrade of neutrals. "I want to create a line of candles one day. Maybe you want to draw something? The packaging is important.” She told me.

I started to jot down some notes one evening in our garden. Back then, we lived on West 12th Street in the Village of Manhattan and had the entire ground floor of a townhouse, complete with its shaded 78-foot garden. It was a secluded paradise apt for musings.

In my notes, I had included memories of smells from my childhood, and upon re-reading them, I noticed that they were about moments and places that each held a meaning or a cherished memory and were tied to a particular scent. I was struck by how these scent memories had elicited details and feelings I would not have thought I could remember.

I also noticed my entries were too personal to share with the designer I worked for. Smells were an integral part of my childhood memories, and these notes had little to do with designing boxes. They were far more profound than that.

My consulting project ended with her a month later. I created some packaging for her, and to this day, I have no idea if she ever materialized them into something. We parted ways, and a renewed interest in fragrance remained, this time for the home. I’ve always loved perfume and candles, but focusing on them from a product development perspective made me look at the product type differently.

The Power Of Scent

Not so long after, one evening, I walked back home by a window in the West Village wreathed with blooming jasmine vines. In the diaphanous hours of twilight, despite not receiving direct sunlight, the vine was covered in white stars, diffusing their perfume through the street — a bit incongruent in the heart of New York City. I was immediately transported to the past, to my paternal grandmother’s garden, and marveled at how the scent took me on such a trip. One thing to notice is the memories, and another is to notice the feelings and then realize that the sense of smell had a great deal to do with that particular moment.

As soon as I was home, I opened my notebook again to write, feeling there was something else underneath this process. I realized I wanted to be in my grandmother’s garden again — to hear the sounds and smell the scents — as if I could somehow be instantly transported seven thousand miles away and decades into my past to the moment I first smelled jasmine.

While writing, I thought, "What if I could recreate the smells myself?" That could be the catalyst for transporting myself back in time and place to these formative memories. Something hit home. I imagined how it all could make sense if I focused on creating a product that could transmit emotions and share a little of me in the process. But, of course, the first question that came to mind was, "How in the world am I going to learn perfumery?"

And that was that. 

At the end of that summer, I landed the job I had been interviewing for. However, since the ideas were fresh in my mind, I continued working on them. I spent many evenings drawing packaging concepts and jotting down concepts for a capsule collection of scented candles. Even if it was all going to be on hold for God knows how long, I knew by then that the best thing to do when one has a surge of inspiration is to pay attention to it and get it all out. 

A Scent-Moment

I subsequently created a capsule of six scents, each with a corresponding scent pyramid, all inspired by what I now refer to as a scent moment: the moment in time and space when I first smelled something, knowing I would remember it forever.

We all remember smells this way.

Time went by, and I continued working in fashion until 2015. What was a purely decadent hobby of collecting niche perfumes and scented candles slowly but surely evolved to be influenced by a sense of purpose: I was buying what I liked and what could inspire me over time.

As my ideas evolved and I continued buying candles, room sprays, and perfumes, I realized there was a common thread linking my memories and influencing the appeal certain scents hold for me. I decided to explore this concept deeper and understand why certain smells were more attractive to me than others.

Perfume In Memory And At Home

I understood my nose and brain formed a massive library of odors. And I also realized that the use of perfume is intimately related to our culture. Perfumes for the home play a significant role in creating a sense of safety, calmness, and inspiration. The use of perfumery in the home varies significantly across different cultures, making it a fascinating subject of study. Our sense of smell plays a significant role in our sense of home. 

This mental library of odors, this archive that can tap into my memories and emotions, sifts through everything and seems to be always on. It sparked a thought process that led me to examine my origins, those of my ancestors, and the true nature of their cultural traditions as they migrated to the Americas.

This blending of familial customs and origins helped create a new identity. Each side of my family had its own identity, and what they liked in terms of flavors and smells had much to do with their origins. Exploring the customs and habits that my ancestors brought from the Old World and those they encountered in the New fascinated me, and I realized they had shaped the tastes in scent I had developed from a very young age.

A New Chapter

In 2015, I retired from the fashion industry and dedicated myself full-time to this project. I first decided to go the private label route; after all, isn't that what one does when one doesn't know perfumery? But what I had in mind was too precious to hand to someone else. That is the easy way out. My husband had a significant influence on it: "If you want this project to be personal, you must learn to do it yourself," were his words. 

So, I did. It took a few years, but I finally launched for retail in early 2024. It sounds far simpler than it is: learning perfumery from scratch is an overwhelming task. But I loved every minute of it, and this is one of the crafts that you have to accept it will continue to be a learning process for the rest of your life if this is what you decide to do.

While studying high-perfumery methodology, chemistry, and botany, I researched migratory currents, trade winds, the history of trade sailing the Atlantic Ocean, and crucial perfumery materials in all continents, including those endemic to and imported into the Americas.

So, those original six scents evolved into scent families that today encompass many more formulas, numbering over one hundred and growing. I launched with the original six, but in 2025, I started adding a new fragrance every month to my website. RHR Luxury has a library of twelve scent families, where I comprehensively organize fragrance formulas according to their scent profiles. Whether characterized by white flowers, green notes, woody, leathery, fruity, or amber influences, the system by scent family effectively places them among similar types of scents.

The combination of research, countless hours mixing raw materials, and exploring scent memories has resulted in an expansive body of work I never imagined possible.

I continue to study high perfumery and blend all my fragrances myself.

I love what I do.

This body of work serves as the medium through which RHR Luxury attempts to convey, through scent, that we all come from somewhere and share more in common than what appears on the surface.

RHR