Meet the Perfumer Behind the Custom Scents at Some of the World’s Best Hotels

Johanna Monange has an eye on what’s next in fragrance.

At the entrance to the recently renovated, 510-room Mandarin Oriental Singapore, a sidewalk diffuser perfumes the air with mandarin orange and a bouquet of osmanthus, a flower native to East Asia. Inside the art-filled lobby, the scent takes on a fresher, more floral character, revealing facets of orchids and white tea leaves. The mood becomes warmer in the spa, where notes of cashmere wood envelop and complement the wood-paneled surroundings.

It’s all part of an invisible yet immersive “scentscape” created by the French-born, Singapore-based “nose” Johanna Monange, who has become one of the hospitality industry’s secret weapons, crafting singular, destination-inspired perfumes for some of the world’s top hotels.

“Scent can enrich our journeys and create strong associative memories with a place,” says Monange, who credits her childhood in Bordeaux with cultivating her interest in fragrance. She remembers loving the scent of roses and lavender in her parents’ flower garden and developing her palate by enjoying sips of wine at the family dinner table. “It was a very sensorial upbringing,” she says. “It made me hypersensitive to my environment.”

That early exposure proved formative: After completing her master’s degree in Beijing, Monange studied at a perfumery school in the Provençal town of Grasse. It wasn’t long before she started lending her expertise to leading European fragrance houses such as the Geneva-based giant Firmenich, where she helped craft best-selling scents such as Armani Aqua Di Gioia by Giorgio Armani, Viktor&Rolf’s Spicebomb, Paco Rabanne’s 1 Million, and Lancôme’s La Vie Est Belle. The deeper she dove into the world of big beauty, the more certain she became that the industry’s next big thing was highly personalized, customizable scents: “The major brands were making floral, fruity, gourmand scents that all smelled the same,” says Monange, who moved to Singapore with her family in 2014. “I saw flaws in this one-size-fits-all approach – what works in France, for example, doesn’t work in China.”

After more than two decades in the industry, in 2020 Monange launched her own bespoke fragrance house, Maison 21G, where shoppers, guided by her team, work with essential oils to blend their own individualized perfumes at dedicated retail spaces across Asia, including a flagship inside Singapore’s Shoppes Marina Bay Sands. The model proved to be a huge success, and not just among consumers. Major hotels such as Park Hyatt Sydney started approaching Monange with requests to create custom scents and fragrance-based guest experiences for their properties.

To craft the perfect hotel scent, she considers a destination’s climate, history, vegetation, and even culinary traditions. And she takes into account the varying preferences of perfume-lovers around the world: In the Middle East, for example, she’s seen a penchant for stronger scents with notes of spice, oud, vanilla, and flowers such as Taif rose and jasmine, while in Asia, the emphasis is on all things green, woody, floral, and fresh: lily of the valley, mimosa, cashmere wood, and vetiver.

While fragrance trends come and go, Monange predicts that hotel scent design will only grow in popularity as travelers increasingly seek out properties with a deep sense of place – and as more fashion and beauty brands enter the travel space, whether through resort-wear collaborations or personalized shopping experiences. To that end, many of the hotels that Monange partners with, including Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, stock a selection of her scent-based creations such as candles and reed diffusers in their gift shops, allowing guests to “bottle” their vacation memories and bring them back home.

When she isn’t concocting bespoke hotel fragrances, Monange loves exploring her adopted city of Singapore with her family and friends – taking in the full range of the city’s sensory pleasures from dining and nature to craft cocktails. Here, four of her go-to spots.

MacRitchie Reservoir: The city’s green lung, Singapore’s oldest and largest reservoir has an abundance of rainforest-lined hiking trails and rich biodiversity. “I’ll go running here on the weekend and spot monkeys and snakes – it’s wild,” Monange says.

Jumbo Seafood: “My grandmother is from Brittany, so we ate a lot of crab growing up,” explains Monange, “but I’ve never had crab as good as what’s served at Jumbo’s.” Since 1987, the Singapore restaurant chain has served its famous black pepper crab: a sweet, vinegary, and intensely savory dish made by frying hard-shell crabs with black pepper. “It is beyond delicious,” she says.

Cé La Vi Skybar & Club: Perched on the 57th floor of Marina Bay Sands, this club is one of Monange’s favorite spots to go dancing, thanks to its spectacular views of the city skyline and hip-swaying sets by major international DJs such as Themba. “It always conjures the feeling of being inside The Fifth Element,” she says, referencing the 1997 cult-classic sci-fi film.  

Restaurant Jag: The famed eight-course La Balade du Végétal tasting menu at this Michelin-starred French restaurant at Robertson Quay incorporates wild-foraged French alpine herbs and wine pairings from its cellar of more than 200 French bottles. “It’s an aromatic feast of the senses,” Monange says.

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