2024 Author Expo Author

After a 15-year career as a natural perfumer during which she studied and wrote about fragrance ingredients for her blog and others, Dr. Pearlstine began organizing her thoughts into a book about scent. In teaching students and hosting perfume events, she found that fragrance brings people together, that there are no ‘right’ answers when evaluating jasmine, and that people experience the same scent in different ways. As she shared stories about the origins of natural perfume ingredients, she also taught about environmental and geographic patterns in plants that create the aromatic molecules used for perfumery. Which naturally led to a combination of science and art—writing about fragrance from a natural history perspective. Having earned her PhD in biology, she spent nearly twenty years as a wildlife biologist, getting up close and personal with hawks, falcons, kingsnakes, turtles, wading birds, and a variety of other animal life. As a second act, Elise trained as a natural perfumer and founded a company to make and sell perfumes and soap. Her book Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance was published in May 2022 by Yale University Press and encompasses knowledge and experience from both her careers. Scent has received positive reviews internationally from publications like Scientific American, Nature, New Scientist, and The Economist as well as being named semi-finalist by the Florida Writers Association for the Royal Palm Literary Award. Elise loves speaking about fragrance, and you may find her at a book event with samples of the fragrances she writes about.