There is no single African perfume, but dozens of ways of wearing scent from one end of the continent to the other. An African perfume can be a resin burned over embers, an oil left to macerate for months, or a fragrant wood slipped between folded clothes. At Carrément Belle, we wanted to look at these traditions closely, naming them and placing them on the map, rather than reducing them to one image.
After a first stop in Asia, here is the second leg of our olfactory world tour.
What is an African perfume?
An African perfume is not an olfactory family, it is a set of practices. Three great forms coexist across the continent: fumigation of resins and fragrant woods, macerated scented oils, and flower waters distilled in the Maghreb. The materials change from one region to the next, the use stays ritual and domestic.
The continent holds fifty-four countries and thousands of languages. Speaking of a traditional African perfume in the singular makes little sense, except to name what these traditions share: scent here is rarely a liquid you spray, and far more often a material you burn, rub or carry with you.
Three gestures come back everywhere. Fumigation first: a resin, a wood chip or a scented blend is burned over embers to perfume a room, clothes or skin. Then the scented oil: noble materials macerate in a fatty base for weeks, sometimes years, giving an alcohol-free perfume that stays close to the skin. And finally the flower water, obtained by distillation, a tradition firmly settled along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
Is there such a thing as the smell of Africa?
No, and that is exactly the trouble with shortcuts. What travellers describe as the smell of the continent is in fact a climate: warm earth, dust, flowers, spices and wood fires, blended by humid air. The Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, who spent years in Africa, summed it up in a single image.
This smell chases us, exhaling from the palm groves, from the burning earth.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun, 1998
That is an impression, not a raw material. The materials themselves have precise names, and they are harvested in precise places.
Which raw materials does Africa give to perfumery?
Africa supplies perfumery with resins (frankincense from Somalia and Somaliland, myrrh from the Horn of Africa), fragrant woods from Central and West Africa, a rare animal material harvested in Southern Africa called hyraceum, orange blossom from Morocco and Tunisia, clove from Madagascar, and fatty bases such as shea butter.
Resins: frankincense and myrrh
Frankincense, or olibanum, is the hardened tear of a Boswellia tree. Somaliland and Somalia are, together with Oman and Yemen, its historic harvesting grounds. Myrrh, more bitter and more balsamic, comes from a neighbouring tree, Commiphora, found in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Both resins have a story of their own, which we tell elsewhere: the origin of incense.
Woods and oud
The continent holds fragrant woods still barely used in fine perfumery. Oud itself is not African: it comes from South-East Asia. But it has circulated in East Africa and across the Sahel for centuries, through sea and caravan routes, and it goes into most of the continent's burning blends. We devoted a whole article to it: oud wood.
Hyraceum, the africa stone
This is the strangest material on the list. Hyraceum is a fossilised concretion formed by the accumulated droppings of the rock hyrax, a small mammal from Southern Africa that lives in colonies among rocks. Its closest relatives are neither rodents nor marmots, but elephants. Because the material is gathered from the ground already fossilised, harvesting it asks nothing of the animal: it is one of the very few animal materials still used under those conditions, alongside ambergris. Its smell is frankly animalic, leathery, smoky. We look at it in more detail in animal notes in perfumery.
- Origin
- Southern and East Africa
- Nature
- Fossilised concretion from the rock hyrax
- Olfactory family
- Animalic, leathery, smoky
- Place in the pyramid
- Base note
- Other names
- Africa stone, hyrax stone
- Availability
- Rare, artisanal harvest
Orange blossom from the Maghreb
Orange blossom comes from the bitter orange tree, grown in Morocco and Tunisia. Originally from Asia, the tree spread all around the Mediterranean. Its flower yields two different materials: orange flower water by distillation, and neroli absolute by extraction, more honeyed. Our perfumes ippi patchouli and alfred kafé carry a discreet trace of it, powdery and sweet. Both also exist as a home fragrance diffuser.
Madagascar clove
In north-east Madagascar, in the former province of Toamasina, a whole region is called Analanjirofo, which means "the land of clove buds" in Malagasy. Introduced to the island in the early nineteenth century, the tree found an ideal climate there, and the island has ranked among the world's leading producers ever since. The flower buds are picked by hand just before they open, then dried in the sun, which gives them their characteristic brown colour. Clove essence is warm, spicy, almost medicinal. It is what you catch in our fragrance kilim.
Fatty bases and clays
Shea butter, pressed from the nuts of a West African savannah tree, baobab oil, rassoul clay from the Moroccan Atlas: these materials do not scent, they carry scent. They are the base of scented oils and skincare, and they entered European cosmetics long before they entered perfumery.
How do people wear scent in Africa?
In Senegal, thiouraye is burned, an artisanal incense macerated for months. In the Horn of Africa and in Zanzibar, bakhoor is burned: wood chips soaked in scented oils. On the Swahili coast, khumra is worn, an oil-based perfume. In the Maghreb, flower waters and burning gums are used.
What is thiouraye from Senegal?
Thiouraye is an artisanal Senegalese incense, and one of the most recognisable smells in West Africa. It is a blend of wood shavings, fragrant roots and barks, often khamare, soaked in scented oils and enriched with sandalwood, oud, musk or amber. The mixture is left to macerate in a sealed glass jar, for several months and sometimes several years, so that the materials bind together.
There is no standard recipe. Each family composes its own, keeps it and passes it on. Once ready, the blend is burned over embers covered with ash, in a terracotta censer called an ande, which releases plenty of scent without much smoke. Rooms, clothes, bed linen and skin are perfumed this way. Woussoulan, a scented paste from the same family, is worn directly on the body.
- Origin
- Senegal, West Africa
- Nature
- Artisanal incense, burned
- Composition
- Wood shavings, roots, barks, scented oils
- Added materials
- Sandalwood, oud, musk, amber, resins
- Maceration
- From a few months to several years
- Use
- Burned over embers in a censer called ande
What is bakhoor?
Bakhoor is a burning blend made of wood chips, often oud, macerated in scented oils and resins. Born on the Arabian Peninsula, it settled across the whole Horn of Africa and as far as Zanzibar, along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean routes. In Somalia it is called uunsi, and the use is the same: a few chips on a piece of charcoal, then the smoke passed through the hair and under clothes before receiving guests. This culture of fumigation is the same one found in Middle Eastern perfumes, of which East Africa is the direct extension.
What are African perfume oils and khumra?
Khumra is an oil-based perfume prepared in Zanzibar and along the Swahili coast, where noble materials macerate in a fatty base: sandalwood, oud, rose, musk, amber. Alcohol-free, it is applied as a single drop on the wrist or behind the ear, and it stays very close to the skin. It is a direct cousin of attar, whose story we told in the history of attar. These African perfume oils now circulate from Dakar to Mombasa, and are often sold by the bottle, filled to order.
In the Maghreb: souks, flower waters and gums
In Morocco, the scent starts in the souks. Behind the gates of the Marrakech medina, right beside Jemaa el-Fna square, freshly squeezed oranges, mint tea and the smoke of gum arabic burners all mingle. The tanners' souk in Fez, on the other hand, smells like the opposite of perfumery, and someone will hand you a sprig of mint to hold under your nose. In Essaouira it is sea spray, the fish market and dozens of spices sold by the kilo. These warm resin and spice accords are also the matrix of oriental perfumes.
Scent as inheritance
In Senegal as on the Swahili coast, a woman's perfume is handed down from mother to daughter, along with the recipe that goes with it. The composition of a thiouraye is family property: you adjust it, you keep it, you pass it on. Scent has a precise social function here. It announces a visit, a celebration, a wedding, and it stays in the room long after people leave.
How did Africa shape the history of perfume?
Africa has supplied the resins of sacred perfume since ancient Egypt. Expeditions to the Land of Punt, the Horn of Africa ports described in the first century, Swahili trade and then the trans-Saharan tracks kept frankincense, myrrh, ambergris and fragrant woods moving towards Arabia, India and Europe for more than three thousand years.
- 1470 BCQueen Hatshepsut sends an expedition to the Land of Punt, in the Horn of Africa, to bring back frankincense and myrrh. The scene is carved on her temple at Deir el-Bahari.
- 1st centuryThe Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek navigation guide, describes the ports of the Horn of Africa and the frankincense and myrrh trade.
- 8th to 15th centuryThe Swahili city states, from Mogadishu to Kilwa, trade ambergris, resins and fragrant woods with Arabia, Persia and India.
- Early 19th centuryClove, brought from the Moluccas, is planted in Zanzibar and then Madagascar, which becomes one of the world's leading producers.
- 2010sPerfume houses open in Lagos, Nairobi, Dakar and Casablanca, working local materials for a local market.
One more recent episode deserves telling. In the early twentieth century, a scented oil composed in Khartoum, alcohol-free, with sweet floral notes, spread across the whole Sahel. Sold first to pilgrims on their way to Mecca, it served as trading currency on the trans-Saharan tracks, and for decades it remained one of the best-selling perfumes in the world, almost unknown in Europe. A poster campaign in the large Sahelian cities, remarkably modern for its time, had a great deal to do with it.
These movements explain why African burning blends share so many materials with the East: oud, sandalwood, resins and amber travelled long before finished perfumes did.
What does African perfumery look like today?
Two movements cross. Houses born on the continent claim local materials and an African imagination, without going through Europe. In parallel, the large laboratories are studying new African essences, often by capturing the scent of the living plant, and are putting shea, cocoa and rassoul into skincare.
What is really changing is the direction of the gaze. For a long time, African materials left for Europe to be processed there, then sold back. Over the past ten years or so, houses have been setting up in Lagos, Nairobi, Dakar and Casablanca, composing on site and speaking first to customers on the continent and in its diaspora. The codes follow: the bottles, the names, the imagery.
On the materials side, the head space technique, which captures the odour molecules in the air around a living flower without picking it, has opened an enormous field. Essences such as Gabon tulipwood or Ivorian makore are under study, and new notes will eventually appear in fragrances. We had already looked at these regional differences in taste in our world tour of olfactory preferences.
Which Carrément Belle perfumes share these materials?
We do not compose African perfumes, and we will not pretend otherwise. Four of our fragrances do, however, work the same materials as these traditions: the clove and spices of kilim, the oud of goud, the amber and spices of also, the frankincense of 555. All of them are assembled in our workshop in Nîmes.
Warm spices and clove buds over a woody base. The fragrance closest to oriental burning blends.
Oud wood, the material that has circulated in East Africa for centuries, in a modern and smoky reading.
A modern amber, with spices, tonka bean and vanilla. An invitation to an inner journey, warm and enveloping.
Frankincense, iris and white pepper over citrus. The most resinous of our perfumes, and a unisex one.
kilim and also also exist as an extrait de parfum, a higher concentration that pushes the base notes and makes the perfume last longer on the skin. All four fragrances exist as a home fragrance diffuser, which remains the closest thing to these traditions of scenting a room rather than a garment.
Your questions about African perfumes
Is there such a thing as a traditional African perfume?
There is no single traditional African perfume, but very identifiable regional traditions: thiouraye in Senegal, bakhoor and uunsi in the Horn of Africa, khumra on the Swahili coast, flower waters and burning gums in the Maghreb. What they share is fumigation and scented oil, rather than alcohol.
What do African scents smell like?
Most African fragrances are built on resins, woods and spices rather than on fresh florals. Expect smoky frankincense and myrrh, sweet oud and sandalwood, warm clove and pepper, and animalic notes from hyraceum. The overall impression is dense, warm and long-lasting, closer to an oriental accord than to a cologne.
What is thiouraye?
It is an artisanal Senegalese incense, made of wood shavings, fragrant roots and barks soaked in scented oils, then macerated for several months in a sealed jar. It is burned over embers to perfume a room, clothes or skin. Every family has its own recipe, handed down from mother to daughter.
What is the difference between thiouraye and bakhoor?
Both are burning blends, but the base differs. Thiouraye, from Senegal, starts with local wood shavings, roots and barks. Bakhoor, born on the Arabian Peninsula and then adopted from Somalia to Zanzibar, starts mainly with oud wood chips soaked in oils and resins.
What is hyraceum, the africa stone?
It is a fossilised concretion formed by the droppings of the rock hyrax, a small mammal from Southern Africa. It is gathered already hardened, with no intervention on the animal. Its smell is animalic, leathery and smoky, and it works as a base note. Being rare, it stays uncommon in everyday perfumery.
Which African materials end up in a French perfume?
Mainly frankincense and myrrh from the Horn of Africa, orange blossom and neroli from Morocco and Tunisia, clove from Madagascar, geranium and vetiver grown on the continent, and more rarely hyraceum. Shea butter, by contrast, belongs to cosmetics rather than to perfumery.
- There is no single African perfume, but three great practices: fumigation, scented oil and flower water.
- Senegalese thiouraye, bakhoor from the Horn of Africa and Swahili khumra are the best identified traditions.
- African resins, frankincense and myrrh, have fed sacred perfume since ancient Egypt.
- Hyraceum is the continent's most singular animal material, harvested without harming the animal.
- At Carrément Belle, kilim, goud, also and 555 work these same materials, from our workshop in Nîmes.
The Discovery Set brings together our eaux de parfum in sample format, so you can take the time to find the fragrance that suits you. Your first set is refunded as a voucher on your next order.
The Discovery Set
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