Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Two women are leading JPMorgan's acquisition of First Republic, FIFA is threatening to not stream the Women's World Cup in some of Europe's biggest markets, and Michelle Pfeiffer is bringing transparency to the fragrance industry. Happy Wednesday!
- Scent of success. In a beauty industry oversaturated with celebrity-backed brands, having a founder who is passionate about the product—and not simply slapping their name on a line—is critical to standing out. Among the current crop of famous founders, almost no one is as knowledgeable about their product as Michelle Pfeiffer.
The actor is the founder of the fragrance brand Henry Rose. Hearing her discuss fragrance formulations and ingredient transparency, it’s clear she’s an expert on the industry. The brand debuted in 2019, more than a decade after Pfeiffer first began to consider creating a new kind of perfume.
When she had children, she started paying closer attention to the ingredients in the products she used. Oftentimes fragrances were dinged by outside organizations like the Environmental Working Group that rated products based on the safety of their ingredients. But Pfeiffer discovered that the problem wasn’t that so many perfumes were toxic, but that information about their contents wasn’t available. Manufacturers kept their formulations under lock and key to the point that they refused to share ingredient lists. Unable to find fragrances she could fully evaluate herself, she stopped wearing scents for a decade.
The launch of Henry Rose, which Pfeiffer self-funded, helped nudge the industry in a more transparent direction. The brand shares information about all ingredients in its products, warning consumers of potential allergens and communicating that ingredients are used at safe levels. For the traditionally secretive fragrance industry, that was a groundbreaking shift that helped convince other brands they could do the same.
Four years in, Pfeiffer is ready to expand that influence. Henry Rose raised its first round of outside funding from Sandbridge Capital, Fortune is the first to report. Sandbridge’s portfolio includes beauty brands like Ilia, Madison Reed, and Youth to the People. The company declined to disclose the size of the round.
“I needed to have complete control over the brand in the early stages because we had set the bar so high,” Pfeiffer says. “We’ve proven our business model, so now it makes sense to bring in a strategic partner who can help us get to the next level.”
Henry Rose’s products, which range from $120 perfumes to $65 lotions, are sold on its website and in select retail locations, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman. The company allows customers shopping online to request shipments of samples to smell scents—an innovation in an industry that had been skeptical of online sales. Three years ago, Victoria’s Secret Beauty and Avon alum Debi Theis joined as the brand’s president; she now leads a team of 10.
“People said to me in the beginning, ‘Why don't you do cosmetics? Why don't you do skincare? Why don't you do anything in beauty other than fragrance?’” Pfeiffer remembers. “And I said, ‘Because people have already blazed those trails. There's a lot of progress being made with transparency and safer ingredients, but in the fragrance industry, there was zero movement.’”
With Sandbridge’s backing, she hopes to expand further into retail, grow the company’s team and, eventually, build a global brand. “I set out to do this because it was a product that I really, really wanted and couldn't find,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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