Chiaki Nomura
Chiaki Nomura arrived at IFF New York in 2008 with a scientist's precision and an artist's sensibility. Born in Japan, she first studied pharmacy in Tokyo at Meiji Pharmaceutical University before crossing continents to pursue her calling in earnest. She enrolled at ISIPCA in France and later studied at the University of Plymouth in England, earning her Master's in Perfumery and Cosmetics. This unusual path, from pharmaceutical chemistry to fine fragrance, gave her a rare understanding of how molecules behave, how skin interacts with scent, and how to build formulas that feel inevitable rather than arbitrary. Based in New York City, Nomura has spent her career spanning the full spectrum of the industry. She creates fine perfumes, but also body care, haircare, and home fragrances, bringing the same care to a candle as to a extrait. Her work for Bath & Body Works introduced millions of new fragrance lovers to her vision, while her Scents of Wood creations have drawn quiet acclaim from those who seek something more considered. Her travels to more than fifty countries inform her palette more than any trend report could. She brings the restlessness of constant movement into her compositions, translating place and memory into scent.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Chiaki composes
Nomura's style resists easy categorization. She works comfortably across fine perfumery, functional beauty, and home fragrance, finding threads of continuity across categories rather than treating them as separate disciplines. Her technical foundation in pharmacy gives her confidence with synthetics that some perfumers trained purely in the artisan tradition lack. She uses them not as shortcuts but as precision tools, building structures that hold and evolve over time. In her fine fragrance work, she gravitates toward wood, resin, and botanicals that carry geographical specificity. Her Hinoki Forest for Scents of Wood demonstrated her ability to translate landscape into something wearable, capturing the quiet spirituality of Japanese cedar forests. For consumer brands, she brings that same intention, finding ways to make mass-market products feel considered. Her Bath & Body Works collaborations distilled travel memories and personal favorites into accessible forms, never dumbing down the creative vision but translating it with care.
Philosophy
What drives Chiaki
Nomura speaks about scent with the conviction of someone who still finds it miraculous. She has described falling in love with the power that scent possesses to evoke, to transport, to stir something beneath conscious thought. Her approach begins with emotion rather than ingredients. She asks what a fragrance should feel like before she considers what it should smell like. This reversal of the typical creative sequence shapes everything that follows. She believes a perfumer and a person are influenced by their experiences in ways that cannot be separated from their work. Travel, culture, language, food, climate, the texture of daily life in a specific place. These are her raw materials, alongside the raw materials of naturals and synthetics. She approaches each project without predetermined formulas, allowing the brief, the mood, and the moment to guide her. Her philosophy resists the idea that perfumery is decoration. For Nomura, scent is communication.
The houses
Maisons Chiaki composes for
In the same league