Maya Njie

Maya Njie is an independent perfume house founded in London in 2016 by the self-taught perfumer of the same name [1][7]. Working from a studio in Shoreditch, the brand produces a small line of eau de parfum built around memory and personal history, pairing each fragrance with photography and a colour palette. Its founder, who was born in Sweden and is of Swedish and Gambian heritage, draws on both backgrounds in her work.

The brand is small and artisanal rather than mass-market: a one-person house that remains active and trading, with a live shop, a refill service, occasional workshops and a stockist network that reaches the UK, the Nordics, continental Europe, the United States and Japan.

Maya Njie was born in Sweden and grew up in Västerås, an industrial city near Stockholm, to a Gambian father and a Swedish mother [6]. By her own account she was a curious child drawn early to scent, collecting fragrant objects and trying her hand at candle-making. At nineteen she moved to London, where she first worked for the clothing brand Carhartt before turning toward design and, eventually, perfumery.

In 2013 she began studying Surface Design at the University of the Arts London, concentrating on print, pattern and photography. That training in visual art rather than chemistry became the foundation of her later practice; she developed her perfumery through self-directed experimentation with essential oils, aroma compounds and resins. The fragrances grew out of an archive of intimate family photographs, with sources differing on the decade: the brand's own about page places the album in the 1960s, while several editorial interviews describe it as a 1970s album [1][6]. The brand launched as Maya Njie Perfumes in 2016.

The brand is described in editorial coverage as Swedish-born and London-based, which leaves its identity split between the two: its commercial base is London, while the founder's Swedish-Gambian background is woven through the work itself [7].

The work is autobiographical. Njie frames the fragrances as "recollections of memory; scents that seek to capture the essence and preserve the spirit of the intimate and personal," and describes a practice concerned with "the intertwining of scent and memory" [1]. On the homepage the brand presents the perfumes as a way of preserving the founder's past, with scents acting as "souvenirs" tied to her Swedish and Gambian heritage.

Her method is deliberately uncomplicated. In interviews she has said she collects imagery and colour and then settles on a few central ingredients to represent a memory, describing her style as "quite simple" and built on a handful of main notes rather than dense compositions. She gravitates toward vetiver, iris and violet, noting that iris "really comes alive in a formula, where it just blooms" [6]. She has also pushed back on the idea that synthetic materials are inherently inferior to natural ones, observing that everything is chemistry and that dose, not origin, determines toxicity [7]. Trade coverage has characterised the house as a gender-neutral, niche approach to perfumery [8].

The brand's output is eau de parfum, sold mainly in 50 ml bottles alongside smaller 7.5 ml sizes and a discovery set of samples. The range includes Les Fleurs, Tropica, Nordic Cedar, Vanilj, Tobak, Syrus, Voyeur Verde and Aethi Opum. Each scent is paired with its own photography and palette, an extension of the founder's visual-art background. The brand does not single out one hero fragrance; the catalogue presents the scents as a set rather than ranking them.

According to the company, all of its perfumes are vegan and not tested on animals, in line with EU regulations. The brand runs a refill service for its 50 ml bottles, offered at a discount, with customers returning empties to the London studio; it presents this as a way to cut packaging waste, and says it reuses customer packaging where possible. Beyond its own operations, the company says it supports The Gambia Academy, an organisation focused on education reform in Africa, and Ecologi, which it describes as funding "climate projects focused on reforestation, renewable energy, and community-based initiatives" [1].

In 2019 the brand began stocking at Liberty in London, a step its later trade-press coverage frames as raising its profile [8]. It has been the subject of long-form interviews, including a profile in The Worshipful covering the founder's upbringing and the family-photo-album origin of the fragrances, and an "In Conversation" piece by Oliver Spencer on her scent-and-memory philosophy [6][7]. In 2024 the trade publication Perfumer & Flavorist profiled her self-taught path into the industry [8].

The brand is active. Its e-commerce site carries an in-stock 2026 range, the refill and workshop programmes are running, and it lists a current multi-region stockist network that includes Liberty in London as well as retailers across the Nordics, continental Europe, North America and Japan. It remains a small, single-perfumer operation rather than a scaled commercial house.