Michelle Pfeiffer has taken on a new role as a clean beauty guru with the launch of her unisex fragrance line, Henry Rose, after giving up perfume for 10 years because she wasn’t sure if it was safe.
A number of celebrities have developed their own fragrance lines over the years, but the 60-year-old actress has gone one step further by creating a company that is ‘100 per cent transparent’ about the ingredients in its products.
Michelle appeared on the Today show Monday to promote Henry Rose, explaining that her new line has ‘been a long time in the making.’
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Clean beauty: Michelle Pfeiffer, 60, launched her new unisex fragrance line, Henry Rose, on Monday. Henry Rose is ‘100 per cent transparent’ about its ingredients
Collection: Henry Rose is currently offering five different scents: Last Light, Torn, Dark is Night, Fog, and Jake’s House. Each bottle retails for $120
‘About 20 years ago when I became a new mom, like a lot of new parents, I started paying more attention to the products that I was exposing my kids to and began to look for safer options for the family,’ she recounted.
‘Twenty years ago that was a bigger challenge then it is today.’
The actress, who shares two children, Claudia Rose, 26, and John Henry Pfeiffer, 24, with her husband, producer David E. Kelley, said she came across the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database and ‘went down the rabbit hole.’
‘Fragrance would pop up and it would get a really, really high hazard level, and so I took that to mean, well, all fragrance must be really, really toxic,’ she recalled.
‘Well, of course, that turns out not be exactly true. It’s was the lack of transparency.’
Michelle gave up fragrance for years and even turned down lucrative enforcement deals because she couldn’t find enough data on perfume ingredients.
Meant to be: Michelle appeared on the Today show Monday to promote Henry Rose , explaining that her new line has ‘been a long time in the making’
Turn off: Michelle began paying attention to the products she was using after she became a mom. She found there was a lack of transparency when it came to fragrance ingredients
Last year a report from Breast Cancer Prevention Partners listed perfumes among the products that contain chemicals with long-term health concerns, including some it claims can affect fetal development when pregnant women are exposed.
In 2010, after years of missing perfume, she decided to develop a brand that she would be open about its ingredients, but she quickly reached a ‘dead end.’
She told Bloomberg that one fragrance house said it could only be 75 per cent transparent.
‘What’s that? It’s like being 75 percent organic,’ she said.
Michelle ended up shelving the idea until she met with Ken Cook, co-founder and president of the Environmental Working Group.
Smells good! Today anchor Hoda Kotb couldn’t resist leaning over and taking a whiff of the Henry Rose perfume on Michelle’s wrist
Inspiration: Henry Rose is a combination of her children’s middle names. Michelle and her husband David E. Kelley are pictured with their kids Claudia Rose and John Henry in 2007
She means business: The actress didn’t wear perfume for 10 years over safety concerns
Although he initially thought what she was doing was near impossible, she took a seat on EWG’s board, and they started meeting with fragrance houses together.
‘I realized that to meet the EWG Verified safety standards, I needed them at the table with me throughout the process,’ she explained on the Henry Rose website.
‘After a lot of false starts and dead ends we finally found our partners in IFF, a luxury fragrance house, and made a list of high quality ingredients we could trust.
‘Then, we upped the ante and got the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute involved, to make sure we met their standards too.’
Goal: Michelle partnered with luxury fragrance house IFF to create a line of scents that would meet the EWG Verified safety standards
Process: The Batman Returns star admitted it was a ‘huge challenge’ for perfumers to create a fine fragrance with a limited number of ingredients
The company boasts that Henry Rose, which is named after her children’s middle names, is the first line of fragrances to be both EWG Verified and Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold, but she stressed that the process wasn’t easy.
‘It was a huge challenge for everyone, especially our perfumers,’ she explained.
‘I was demanding the same level of mastery and quality as other fine fragrances, while also limiting the palette of ingredients that they typically formulate with from 3,000 to about 300.’
Henry Rose is currently offering five different scents: Last Light, Torn, Dark is Night, Fog, and Jake’s House. Each bottle retails for $120 and is ‘meant to evoke a personal memory, person, place or feeling’ that she loves.
Michelle told Refinery29 that Jake’s House was inspired by the smell in her grandparents’ bathroom in North Carolina.
Memories: Michelle said each Henry Rose scent is ‘meant to evoke a personal memory, person, place or feeling’ that she loves
One-of-a-kind: Henry Rose boasts it is the first line of fragrances to be both Environmental Working Group (EWG) Verified and Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold
‘My grandfather’s name is Jake,’ she explained. ‘It smells very soap-y and clean.’
The Old Spice Michelle’s father used to wear was the inspiration behind Torn, while Fog evokes memories of her summers in San Francisco.
Michelle, who recently joined Instagram, took to social media on Monday to introduce her new fragrance line.
‘From the beginning, fragrance has been shrouded in mystery. Today, we are cracking open the last black box of transparency in personal care,’ she wrote. ‘I’m so pleased to introduce @henryrose, a journey I’ve been on for nearly a decade.
‘Henry Rose is the first line of genderless fine fragrances to be both EWG Verified and Cradle to Cradle Gold certified, proving you do not need to sacrifice quality for safety. I couldn’t be more excited to finally share our secrets with all of you.’