Gattefossé will soon be celebrating its 130th anniversary.
Ours is a company with a wealth of history and we have long wanted
to better anchor it in the long term perspective by setting up
a Foundation able to draw our future line from the roots of the past.

This, for me, is a way of planning the firm’s future beyond simple
concerns of economic performance,paving the way to a culture
where sense and entrepreneurship can foster initiatives that promote knowledge-sharing and inventions, aiming at all times to create
openings to the outside world.
It is also a way to pay tribute to our predecessors, those visionary,
provocative inventors who were our founding ancestors.

My grandfather René-Maurice Gattefossé bequeathed us his taste
for intellectual adventure in many fields including botany, philosophy, archaeology, perfumery, publishing, and the origins of man. His keen penetrating mind put him a jump ahead of contemporary thinking;
being both reactive and pragmatic his intuition set him
on the right tracks—a good example is his publication Modern Perfumery.

His consuming passion though was therapy through essential oils
that he was the first to dub Aromatherapy. He spent much of his life,
research efforts and experiments resurrecting this forgotten technique.
He was in this respect what his friend Bernard Aimé called "a trail-blazer".

My father, Marcel Gattefossé, arrived in the company during the post-war pharmaceutical boom and—together with his brother-in-law Emile Mahler—carved out a special niche in pharmaceutical excipients.

While he clearly left his mark of credibility in dermo-cosmetology
—his scientific field par excellence—Marcel’s personal life extended well
beyond the scope of his research. Indeed, he always lived corporate life
as a profound human experience. As a man of conciliation and encounters, Marcel respected everybody, but especially believed in and encouraged
the "young generation". He excelled at creating cultural, scientific, spiritual
and family exchanges, melding knowledge and culture.

Yes, our humanists, René-Maurice and Henri-Marcel Gattefossé would
welcome the creation of this Foundation, happy to see us rooted
in a strong vision of the world and the company. The Foundation must now become a special place where initiatives and innovative practices
are put to the fore, promoting more solid actions for health, but also
a new way to exchange, meet and learn from the experiences
of others.


Sophie Gattefossé-Moyrand,
President of the Gattefossé Foundation