Fragonard: from perfume maker to art de vivre icon

You may be familiar with popular French perfume maker Fragonard - but did you know that Anne, Agnès and Françoise Costa evolved the company into an art de vivre icon when they took over from their father Jean-François?

After studying law in Paris, the middle daughter, Agnès, was the first to join her father in 1984, at the age of 22, much to her mother’s surprise, as she had imagined, given Agnès’s passion for reading and writing, that she would become a writer.

Agnès herself had no certainty she could be of use. She gave herself five years to decide whether to continue or step away. Encouragements: her father’s appeals, her love of perfume, her flair for communication. Doubts: her youth and the fact of being a woman, destined to collide with men who had run the business “the old way” for years.

That collision duly occurred before she found her footing. For five years, she learned how the company worked and fulfilled her father’s brief: to make Fragonard better known. She modernised the House’s printed materials and image and refined the talks given to visitors. Resistance was strong, and the early years were hard. Two years in, she called her sister Françoise for help; together, she thought, they could move mountains. 

The sisters, who had shared four student years in Paris, worked wonderfully together – perhaps because they were unalike, and thus complementary. Agnès is passionate, curious, dreamy, and highly creative. Françoise, deeply attuned to art, also has a sharp head for business and people. She accepted less out of desire than because she could refuse her sister nothing, especially a plea for help. 

The youngest, 22, had just graduated from a business school with a focus on finance. She loved travel – and numbers – and was poised to take a job in Singapore. Instead, she went to Grasse, where their father immediately gave her a task equal to her abilities: to oversee the creation of a second factory – soon named the Fabrique des Fleurs – which she would direct for eight years.

Little by little, thanks to the sisters, the atmosphere changed. United, competent, and full of verve, they were no longer seen as “the boss’s daughters on a summer job” but as leaders. The five-year mark arrived: Agnès and then Françoise had learned the trade, met their father’s expectations as best they could, and felt it was time to assert themselves and give Fragonard a fresh impulse.

They would never dream of leaving; the aim was to press their vision. In 1990 they told their father they intended to modernize the House, beginning with a radical overhaul of all packaging. Jean-François let them proceed, not wishing to discourage them, though he had his reservations. The family remained close; debates were frequent but never turned into conflict.

Over the next decade, Agnès and Françoise transformed Fragonard’s world without ever renouncing its traditions – independence, artisanal excellence, Provencal culture, and the spirit of sharing. They strengthened those foundations, turning them into an advantage.

Within that framework, a new breeze blew. With a modest budget from their father, they remade the House’s image – introducing a bright, colorful, feminine visual language with professional help – and brought communication and marketing into harmony with their own nature: joie de vivre, the pleasures of nature, and a touch of gourmandise.

A renewed enterprise

From 1995, as their father’s longtime lieutenants retired, they at last felt fully at the helm. Until 48 hours before his death in 2012, however, Jean-François still came daily – sometimes even on Sundays – to his office in Grasse. As the success of his daughters became plain, debates faded; his experience, business sense, and eye proved invaluable.

The image of Fragonard evolved – and so did the atmosphere in offices, factories, and shops. Leaving the Fabrique des Fleurs in 1994, Françoise joined her sister at the historic site. Under her leadership, a renewed enterprise took shape.

Over the years she built a loyal team, including dedicated site directors; she established a human resources function with a hiring process she herself designed; and she developed a strong finance department. Without denying the past or its values, Fragonard entered the twenty-first century under her watch with striking success in both sales and image, projecting the spirit of a lively, singular family house.

Passionate about architecture, she also oversaw – with an exacting eye – the many renovation projects as well as the creation of new shops and museums.

As Françoise likes to put it simply: “I handle the inside; Agnès handles the outside.” In other words, she keeps the enterprise running smoothly while her sister enchants the customer. For Agnès, “the creative,” that task is a joy.

A culture-hungry, beauty-besotted magpie, she is an antenna always on – a curious mind with 1,000 ideas a day. For both sisters, 1997 proved pivotal – the great shift that would carry Fragonard from a perfume house to a whole world. That year the company launched its website, which shortly afterward became available in five languages, offering global visibility and enabling online sales. More decisive still – because it would become a wellspring of inspiration – the Musée Provencal du Costume et du Bijou (Museum of Provencal Costume and Jewelry), built on Hélène’s collection, opened in Grasse to immediate success. Celebrating a popular yet sumptuous craft – beautiful textiles and refined objects – without direct ties to perfume, and arriving on the cusp of the year 2000, the museum fueled Agnès’s imagination.

A few weeks later, the sisters were in Tokyo, invited to the opening of a perfume museum. One morning, at breakfast in their hotel room, Agnès took a sheet of paper and said, “What if we wrote our vision of an ideal Fragonard for the next millennium right now?” Françoise played along, and their wish was the same: Fragonard should become a brand reflecting their tastes – and their parents’ – their art de vivre, their way of being. To do so, the House had to move beyond perfume and enter the entire home: fragrance in the bath, tableware in the kitchen and dining room, décor in the living room and bedroom, clothes in the closet and on the body.

Thus was born the new, “transversal” Fragonard – joyful and feminine – which the sisters set about building with gusto.

Fragonard today

Certain products and experiences, born of family history and personal taste, are offered because the sisters wish to share them. One example is the family olive oil, pressed from olives harvested for decades at Le Bois Dormant, the Grasse estate acquired by their father in 1955 – a flavour the sisters have known since childhood.

Another is La Maison Fragonard, ideally situated on Rue du Palais in Arles, which since 2021 has united a boutique on the first floor with six rooms and suites above. Decorated by the sisters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Provencal style, with touches of the Orient and furnishings they personally selected, it offers guests an intimate reflection of the interiors in which they themselves live.

In the same spirit, the sisters inaugurated Le Mas du Parfumeur in Grasse in 2026. Acquired earlier, this 19th-century Provencal bastide, composed of two buildings and surrounded by over seven acres of land, now welcomes visitors as a guest house. Thousands of roses, jasmines, and mimosas were planted around it.

Extracted from Fragonard: The Perfume of Provence by Alain Stella (Flammarion, 2026)