The Essence of Provence: The Story of L'Occitane

The extraordinary rags-to-riches tale of Olivier Baussan and the roadside soap stand that became L’Occitane, one of the world’s most successful purveyors of natural fragrances. Founded in 1976 by Olivier Baussan, the now world-renowned fragrance company L’Occitane, “a woman of Provence” in Old French, was inspired by the essences of lavender and honeysuckle, rosemary, sage, and thyme indigenous to his childhood home in the south of France. In fact, it had been since the mid-1950s that Prove...