It is only in recent times that Elizabeth Arden has started to concentrate on perfumes and fragrances.
Today Arden markets Elizabeth Taylor, Britney Spears, Halston (with Jeff Gordon) and Geoffrey Beene and the brand keeps appearing within any studies carried out on 20th century fragrances.

To understand the reason why the name of Elizabeth Arden features so highly in our perfume history is due to the woman behind the name, who was born as Florence Nightingale Graham.

Just as Coco Chanel did, she quickly learnt the art of selling goods. Her experience was founded in selling cabbages at local farmers’ markets. Again, as with Coco Chanel, she also developed a deep love of horses. She was born in the 1880s (like Coco Chanel) and again like Chanel, she had opened her first beauty salon in central Paris by the year 1922.

She left her parents’ farm and moved to New York. Florence became a “treatment girl” in a local salon and learnt about the business and during 1909 she went into business herself, firstly with Elizabeth Hubbard and when Hubbard departed the business, she ran it by herself.

Moving from salon treatments, she rapidly moved to products, wholesaling to department stores and drug stores and then eventually distributing globally.

She always considered that her greatest competitors and rivals were Helena Rubinstein and Dorothy Gray and Florence’s success was equal to that of Chanel (who at the time was not yet seen as a perfumer) and Francois Coty and Ernest Daltrof (who were seen as perfumers).

The earlier of Elizabeth Arden’s fragrances are Lilac, Arden Rose and Italian Lilac which were launched in 1922. Blue Grass was launched in 1934.