Nelly Hachem‑Ruiz
Nelly Hachem-Ruiz grew up between two worlds. Born to a Syrian family and raised in Paris, she absorbed both the olfactory traditions of her heritage and the artistic pulse of a city famous for its beauty. Her grandmother planted the first seed, teaching her that perfume is memory made tangible. At IFF, she has spent nearly two decades refining that understanding into a practice grounded in emotion and imagination. Her work with ingredients like Koavone demonstrates a willingness to push material boundaries, using unexpected combinations to create scents that feel both intimate and expansive. With creations for Hugo Boss and Jusbox, she has proven herself equally comfortable building mass-market icons and niche narratives. Colleagues describe her as welcoming, spontaneous, and generous, someone who shares her world as openly as she shares her fragrances.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Nelly composes
Nelly gravitates toward luminous, warm constructions that carry emotional weight. She favors ingredients with presence and diffusion, often pushing materials beyond their conventional usage to see what they become at unexpected concentrations. Her signature approach involves balancing radiance with intimacy, creating fragrances that feel expansive on the skin without sacrificing closeness. She has shown particular skill with amber and woody directions, building depth that rewards repeated wearing. Her work spans from the confident, seductive character of Boss The Scent Elixir For Him to the playful defiance of Sisters B4 Misters. For Jusbox, she approaches each fragrance as storytelling, weaving historical references with a distinctly contemporary sensibility.
Philosophy
What drives Nelly
Nelly works with history. Every fragrance begins with a question about what came before and what endures. She treats perfume as a living archive, pulling from cultural memory, personal experience, and sensory research to build compositions that resonate on a deeper level. Movement, emotion, and imagination drive her process. For Nelly, scent is not a static object but a dynamic conversation between the fragrance and the person wearing it. She designs for presence, for the way a perfume announces itself in a room and lingers in memory long after the wearer has left. Her creative philosophy asks: what remains? What stays with you? The answer shapes everything she builds in the laboratory.
The houses
Maisons Nelly composes for
In the same league