Brook Harvey-Taylor
Brook Harvey-Taylor grew up in Montana with a restlessness that led her to start mixing her own fragrances as a teenager. While studying in college, she apprenticed for an aromatherapist and discovered the art of healing through essential oils. That training shaped everything that came next. In 1996, she founded Pacifica Beauty with what she describes as a "hidden aromatherapy agenda" woven into her fragrances. She started in perfume because she believed scent could do more than smell good. The brand grew into a comprehensive beauty line spanning skincare, makeup, hair care, and sun protection, but fragrance remained her first love. As one of the original voices in clean beauty, Harvey-Taylor built Pacifica on a foundation of 100% vegan and cruelty-free formulations decades before the industry caught up. Her approach was practical and passionate: she wanted to prove that accessible pricing and ethical production could coexist with quality and creativity. She serves as both founder and chief creative officer, keeping her hands in product development across every category. Her background in aromatherapy still informs how she thinks about fragrance composition, treating each scent as something that can shift mood and create connection.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Brook composes
Harvey-Taylor draws from her aromatherapy training to build fragrances grounded in essential oils and natural aromatics. She favors combinations that feel grounded rather than abstract, selecting ingredients for their emotional resonance as much as their olfactory appeal. Her signature approach involves layering botanical materials to create complexity without relying on synthetic shortcuts. She works to make each fragrance feel like an experience rather than a single note, often building around a central theme that ties the ingredients together. The clean beauty constraint shapes her technical choices. She operates within a 100% vegan and cruelty-free framework, which means she avoids materials like ambergris or musk that come from animal sources. This limitation has pushed her toward innovative botanical alternatives that achieve similar effect through plant-based chemistry.
Philosophy
What drives Brook
Harvey-Taylor believes fragrance should work on multiple levels. She approaches each formula with the conviction that what you smell should also affect how you feel. This drives her commitment to essential oils and botanical ingredients that carry therapeutic potential alongside their aromatic qualities. Her philosophy centers on accessibility. She built Pacifica to prove that clean, ethically-produced beauty did not need to carry a luxury price tag. Every product, she argues, should be something real people can actually use. She rejects the idea that sustainability and efficacy are opposing forces, insisting that both belong in the same bottle. The aromatherapy foundation remains visible in how she structures her fragrance lines. She thinks about scent combinations the way a healer might consider them, looking for synergies between ingredients that support the intended mood or feeling. This perspective gives her work a distinct point of view within the mass market.
The houses