Liis

Liis is an independent niche fragrance house based in California, founded by Alissa Sullivan and Leslie Hendin. The two are Marin County natives who, by their own account, grew up minutes apart without ever meeting, each collecting perfume in small boxes and fascinated by what they called its jewel-like quality. The brand's name reflects that partnership directly: it is a portmanteau of the founders' first names, Alissa and Leslie [6].

The company makes eau de parfum alongside candles, hand and body care, and perfume pendants, with the scents at the centre of the range. Liis is made in California in small batches, and the brand describes its formulas as built on conscious, high-quality ingredients and organic sugarcane alcohol [3]. The house remains active, founder-led, and sells directly through its own site as well as through niche retailers internationally.

Accounts of how the founders met vary slightly across interviews, but the throughline is a shared obsession with fragrance. Cult Beauty's brand guide places their meeting at a wedding in Marin County in 2009, while a Flair Index interview describes them connecting in Europe while pursuing master's degrees. Both founders bring perfumery training and a creative background to the project. Alissa Sullivan studied at ISIPCA, the classical perfumery school in Versailles, and has developed product for houses including L'Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon's; Leslie Hendin worked as an artist, designer, and self-taught perfumer, and led creative for other beauty brands before Liis [4].

The founders frame the brand as a creative outlet rather than a commercial exercise. According to the company, each scent draws on personal experience and emotion, and is composed to be minimalist and open to the wearer's own interpretation. They describe Liis as "their shared obsession come to life" [1].

The brand's first product to reach the market was a discovery set, which Cult Beauty dates to 2020 [7]. Its first full-size scents followed, and a 2021 review by the fragrance publication CaFleureBon covered the eau de parfum Bo, describing it as a naturalistic woody-tobacco composition [6]. Because of this two-stage rollout, the founding year is recorded slightly differently across sources: Cult Beauty marks the 2020 discovery-set launch, while CaFleureBon's coverage situates the brand's full-size debut in 2021 [7][6]. The brand's own about page states no year.

Bo was created in collaboration with Jérôme Epinette, a perfumer at the fragrance-and-flavour company Robertet whose work also appears in releases for houses such as Byredo and Atelier Cologne [6].

Liis positions itself around minimalism and everyday wearability. Its stated philosophy, as Leslie Hendin puts it, is "to create beautiful, wearable fragrance that blends perfectly with who you are, that doesn't overpower" [7]. The brand returns repeatedly to the idea of scent worn daily as a "second skin," and to the notion that a fragrance should be a story the wearer interprets rather than a fixed statement [1]. In a founder interview, the range is described as gender-neutral but not masculine, aimed at people who want recognisable, wearable scent over loud, attention-seeking perfume.

The fragrance range includes Bo, a woody-tobacco eau de parfum; Floating, a summer scent built around bergamot, peach, and woods; and others such as Choux Choux and Flower Glyph. Beyond perfume, the catalogue extends to hand and body care, soy-coconut wax candles, and perfume pendants.

On formulation, the company says its fragrances use organic sugarcane alcohol together with a blend of natural essential oils and safe synthetic ingredients. Liis states that its products are made without preservatives, dyes, phthalates, or sulfates, and describes the brand as cruelty-free, vegan, and allergy-tested [3]. Production is done in small batches, which the company attributes to keeping the products fresh.

Liis has been profiled in independent fragrance and beauty press. CaFleureBon published an in-depth review of Bo in 2021, and Cult Beauty produced a brand guide covering the founders, philosophy, and ingredient approach. The Flair Index ran a founder interview profiling Hendin and Sullivan alongside the scents Floating and Bo.

The brand is active. As of 2026 it operates a live e-commerce site with current promotions and a full product range spanning perfume, candles, body care, and pendants. It remains a small, founder-led independent operation rather than a mass-market house, with distribution through its own direct channel and a set of international niche retailers.