Heritage
A house, in its own words
Jules Miller founded The Nue Co. in 2017, initially as a supplements company focused on whole body health. The transition from ingestible wellness products to fragrance came three years later, in 2019, when the brand launched its Functional Fragrance line. According to reports, Miller defied investor advice to make this pivot, choosing to expand beyond supplements into a category she saw as connected to her core wellness mission. The fragrance launch marked a significant business evolution for the young company, one that required convincing stakeholders who apparently questioned whether a wellness supplements brand could succeed in perfumery. Miller has spoken about the decision to move into fragrance as a natural extension of the brand's mood-focused philosophy, arguing that scent represents a direct pathway to emotional states that supplements cannot reach in the same way. The move proved prescient as functional fragrance emerged as a growing category in the broader wellness industry. The brand's early fragrance releases, including Functional Fragrance, Forest Lungs (2020), Mind Energy (2021), and Water Therapy (2022), established a portfolio built around specific emotional outcomes rather than traditional olfactory families. By 2025, The Nue Co. had significantly expanded its offerings with multiple new releases, including a trio of nostalgia-inspired scents developed with neuroscent technology, signaling continued investment in the fragrance arm of the business.
The Nue Co. approaches perfumery through the lens of functional wellness rather than artisanal heritage or luxury heritage codes. The brand explicitly frames its fragrances as tools for wellbeing, not merely decorative accessories. This positioning shapes everything from product development to marketing language. The company developed its fragrance line using what it calls neuroscent technology, a term describing the application of scent research related to how olfactory stimuli affect brain chemistry and emotional states. The brand emphasizes that its fragrances are built for layering and adaptation, suggesting a philosophy that rejects the idea of a single perfect scent in favor of personal customization. Miller has articulated a vision of fragrance as a daily practice similar to taking supplements, something integrated into routine rather than reserved for special occasions. This approach reflects the brand's wellness roots and its interest in democratizing access to the benefits of scent, rather than positioning fragrance as an exclusive or ceremonial luxury. The functional fragrance category itself remains somewhat contested in the industry, with skeptics questioning whether the psychological effects attributed to certain scent profiles are meaningfully different from placebo. The Nue Co. operates in this space with confident claims about mood support while acknowledging that individual responses to scent vary considerably.