I’ve gone back and forth about whether to write this post, but I think it’s time - for my sanity and for yours. Let’s talk about chemicals in perfume.

First Things First: Everything Is Made of Chemicals

I apologize for the throwback to high school chemistry class, but it’s foundational to this whole conversation: everything that exists in the physical world is made of chemicals. Water is a chemical. So is vitamin C. So is rose oil. Some chemicals are natural - made by plants, trees, or even microbes - and some are synthetic - created through chemical reactions in a lab.

There is no such thing as a perfume without chemicals. What matters is where those chemicals come from.

What People Usually Mean by “Chemicals in Perfume”

When I was studying natural perfumery and researching other brands, I kept seeing the same question pop up in comment sections and fragrance forums: “Does this perfume have chemicals in it?”

Most of the time, I assumed people were really asking whether a perfume was made with synthetic fragrance materials or whether it was all-natural. It’s an important distinction, especially for consumers who care about ingredients and are consciously trying to reduce the number of synthetic products they use. But recently, I had a conversation with someone who wasn’t asking that. They were asking if the perfume had any chemicals in it at all.

Let’s unpack that.

All Perfumes (Whether All-Natural or Mainstream) Are Made Entirely of Chemicals

Whether you’re spraying on a conventional designer fragrance or one of my 100% natural perfumes, you’re applying a carefully crafted blend of chemicals to your skin. The difference lies in where those chemicals come from.

- Synthetic fragrance materials are created in a lab. Chemists take a source material - often derived from petroleum - and put it through a series of chemical reactions to produce the final result.

- Natural fragrance materials are extracted from plants (or sometimes resins, barks, or even fungi). They’re made by nature - by the flower, tree, or plant itself - but they’re still chemicals.

So yes, a natural perfume is entirely made of chemicals: natural ones.

Let’s Talk Roses: Natural vs. Synthetic Rose Materials

To help illustrate the difference between natural and synthetic fragrance materials, let’s use rose as an example.

Natural rose materials can be extracted from rose petals in a few different ways:

- Steam or hydrodistillation → results in rose otto (also known as rose essential oil)

- Solvent extraction followed by alcohol wash → results in rose absolute

- CO₂ extraction → results in rose CO₂ extract

Each of these methods yields a different chemical profile, even though they all started with the same roses. Why? Because different extraction techniques pull out different chemicals in different amounts.

A single rose contains hundreds of naturally occurring aroma chemicals. The most prominent include:

- Phenyl ethyl alcohol

- Geraniol

- Citronellol

- Nerol

Depending on the extraction method, the ratios of these - and the presence of other, less concentrated aroma chemicals - will vary. Rose otto contains very little phenyl ethyl alcohol, since this component is largely lost during the high heat of steam distillation. Rose absolute, however, will be dominated by phenyl ethyl alcohol, since that material isn’t impacted by the solvent extraction process.

And then there are the trace components - like beta damascenone and other rose ketones - that exist in extremely small amounts but have an outsized impact on the scent. These molecules are part of what gives rose its richness, depth, and that unmistakable “rosiness” we associate with fresh blooms.

Synthetic Rose Bases & Accords

Synthetic rose materials, on the other hand, are typically built from the ground up in a lab using synthetic versions of those same chemicals. A perfumer might blend synthetic versions of phenyl ethyl alcohol, geraniol, citronellol, nerol, and some additional synthetic materials (sometimes with a drop of rose otto or rose absolute added for label appeal) to create a “rose accord” that smells like rose - or more precisely, how the air around a rose smells (known as its headspace).

The Takeaway

Whether natural or synthetic, all perfume ingredients are chemicals. A natural perfume is still 100% chemical – it’s just made from ingredients crafted by nature instead of a laboratory.

And yes, in some cases, a synthetic rose might smell more like a rose than a natural extract does. That doesn’t make either one better or worse. It’s just a different approach to capturing a scent.

I’m sharing this not to be pedantic, but to help perfume lovers become more informed consumers. Understanding what’s in your fragrance - whether natural or mixed media - can help you find scents you love and trust the brands you buy from.

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Thanks for reading and for being curious about what’s really in your perfume.