Gardenia (2003)

The fragrance of gardenia was deeply personal for Elizabeth, who often wore the heady scent while in Puerto Vallarta with Richard Burton.

When it came time to create her own Gardenia perfume, Elizabeth wanted to replicate the smell of the gardenias growing in her garden on Nimes Road. According to Elizabeth’s authorized biographer, Kate Andersen Brower, “they used cutting edge technology and put a globe around a gardenia in Elizabeth’s garden and inserted a needle coated with wax into the flower so that the wax could absorb the molecules floating in the air around it. This device could identify the name of the scent components around the flower and how much of each scent was present.”