Ernest Beaux

Ernest Beaux (8 December 1881 – 9 June 1961) was a Russian and French perfumer who is best known for creating Chanel No. 5, which is perhaps the world's most famous perfume.

Born in Moscow, Ernest Beaux was the son of Edouard Hyppolite Beaux (1835–1899) and Augustine Wilgemina Misfeld (1843–1906), second wife of Edouard Hyppolite Beaux (1835–1899), who was originally from Lille, France. Ernest Beaux's grandmother, Jeanne-Cléophée Beaux (1810–1882), had come to Russia at the beginning of the 1840s. Édouard-Hyppolyte was her son with Jean Joseph Messinger (1810–1848).

Edouard Francois Beaux (1862–?), Ernest Beaux's half-brother by his father's first wife, Adelaide Fiurth (1842–1879), began as a clerk with the Moscow trading house of Mure and Merilise. He joined A. Rallet & Co., ultimately becoming a member of the board and Deputy Administrator.

Ernest Beaux was born in Moscow, Russia, the brother of Edouard Beaux, who worked for Alphonse Rallet & Co. of Moscow, then the foremost Russian perfume house and purveyor to the Imperial courts. In 1898, A. Rallet and Company, with approximately 1500 employees and 675 products, was sold to the French perfume house, Chiris of La Bocca.

Ernest completed his primary education that same year, and from 1898–1900 apprenticed as laboratory technician in the soap works of Rallet. After his obligatory two years of military service in France, he returned to Moscow in 1902, where he started his perfumery training at Rallet under the guidance of their technical director, A. Lemercier. He finished his perfumery education in 1907, earned a promotion to senior perfumer, and was elected to the board of directors.

In 1912 Russia celebrated the centennial of the Battle of Borodino, the turning point in Napoleon's Russian ambitions. For this celebration Ernest Beaux created the fragrance "Bouquet de Napoleon," a floral Eau de Cologne, for Rallet. It proved to be a major commercial success.

The following year, 1913, marked the tercentenary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty. To follow up on his "Bouquet de Napoleon" success, Ernest Beaux created a now lost fragrance, the "Bouquet de Catherine", honoring Catherine the Great. This fragrance is not to be confused with a fragrance from Brocard, Rallet's chief competitor in Russia called "The Empress's Favorite Bouquet", which later evolved into the Soviet version, "Red Moscow."

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