Perfume Trivia
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99 free Perfume trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Perfume is one of the oldest luxury industries on Earth and one of the least understood: most people who own a bottle could not say what 'eau de toilette' actually means, why the great houses talk about noses, or which animal ambergris comes from. This perfume trivia quiz answers all of that. It covers the history from Tapputi in ancient Assyria and the 4,000-year-old perfumes found in Cyprus through Farina's Cologne, Guerlain's Jicky and Chanel No. 5, the raw materials (jasmine from Grasse, rose from Bulgaria, oud, vetiver, bergamot, musk), the vocabulary of notes and families (chypre, fougère, gourmand) and the famous bottles from Shalimar and Opium to Angel and CK One. There are also questions on the people and places behind the trade: Coco Chanel and Ernest Beaux, Grasse, Cologne, the Osmothèque archive at Versailles, and Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume. Difficulty runs from easy questions about Chanel and Old Spice to expert ones about Iso E Super and who created Joy. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedic reference pages before publishing, and each question carries a citation.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'perfume' comes from Latin words meaning what?
To smoke through
To smoke through: Latin per, 'through', plus fumare, 'to smoke'. The word first named the scented fumes of something burning, such as incense, and only later a liquid scent.
Q 02Tapputi, named on a cuneiform tablet as a palace perfumer, is one of the first recorded chemists of which civilisation?
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia. Around 1200 BC in the Assyrian city of Assur, Tapputi distilled flowers, oil and calamus, filtered the result and put it back through the still several times.
Q 03On which Mediterranean island did archaeologists unearth a 4,000-year-old perfume factory, believed to be the world's oldest?
Cyprus
Cyprus. An earthquake destroyed the Bronze Age perfumery at Pyrgos but also buried its stills and bottles, so scientists could recreate scents from the residues left inside.
Q 04Which Persian polymath is credited with first distilling oils from flowers?
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
Ibn Sina (Avicenna). He is credited with distilling rose petals into both rose oil and rose water, and he used the oil to treat heart conditions.
Q 05By legend, Hungary Water, one of Europe's first alcohol-based perfumes, was first made for whom?
The country's queen, Elizabeth
The country's queen, Elizabeth. The legend, which scholars doubt, has the rosemary water made to treat her ailments, and in one telling it won her a marriage proposal at 72.
Q 06Why is perfume traditionally dabbed on pulse points such as the wrists?
Body heat there diffuses the scent
Body heat there diffuses the scent. At pulse points blood vessels run close to the skin, and the extra warmth keeps the fragrance evaporating so it is released steadily.
Q 07Which fragrance concentration ranks second in strength, just below pure extrait?
Eau de parfum
Eau de parfum. It carries more fragrance oil than an eau de toilette or an eau de cologne, which is why it lasts longer on the skin than those lighter waters.
Q 08In perfumery, what are the quickly evaporating scents perceived immediately on application called?
Top notes
Top notes. They are small, light molecules, citrus and mint among them, that evaporate fast, so a perfume's bright opening gives way to its heart and then its longer-lasting base.
Q 09Which artist's 1985 prints show the Chanel No. 5 bottle?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol. He had started out drawing magazine advertisements in the 1950s, and his Ads series turned famous ones, Chanel's bottle among them, back into art.
Q 10Who composed the formula for Chanel No. 5?
Ernest Beaux
Ernest Beaux. Born in Moscow, he trained at Rallet, perfumer to the Russian imperial court, and after the 1917 revolution closed its Russian business he carried on with the firm's exiles on the Riviera.
Q 11Why did Coco Chanel name her perfume No. 5?
She picked the fifth of the numbered sample vials
She picked the fifth of the numbered sample vials, the story goes, from two sets marked 1 to 5 and 20 to 24, and kept the number for luck because she showed her collections on 5 May.
Q 12Which actress famously answered 'Chanel No. 5' when asked what she wore to bed?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe. The line ran with her first Life cover story in April 1952, and in 2013 Chanel built a whole campaign around a 1960 recording of her telling the story again.
Q 13In 2012, who became the first man to advertise Chanel No. 5?
Brad Pitt
Q 21Natural musk, long used to fix perfumes, comes from a gland of which animal?
The musk deer
The musk deer. Only the male carries the scent pod, and because he was killed to get it, perfumers have largely given up the real thing for imitations.
Q 22Oud, or agarwood, forms in Aquilaria trees after what happens to them?
They are infected by a mould
They are infected by a mould. The tree answers the attack with a dark, fragrant resin that soaks its heartwood, wood that is pale and light while the tree is healthy.
Q 23Vetiver, a staple base note, is the root of what kind of plant?
A grass
Brad Pitt. In a black-and-white spot he mused that 'wherever I go, there you are' and ended on one word, 'inevitable', following faces such as Catherine Deneuve and Nicole Kidman.
Q 14Which Provençal town is known as the world's perfume capital?
Grasse
Grasse. It was a leather-tanning town whose glove-makers began scenting their gloves to mask the stink, and the perfume trade that grew from it outlasted the leather.
Q 15Eau de Cologne was originally mixed in 1709 by whom?
Johann Maria Farina
Johann Maria Farina. An Italian who had settled in the German city, he said the scent recalled a spring morning back in Italy, and he named it in honour of his new home.
Q 16The cologne 4711 is named after a house number handed out in 1794, when which country's army occupied Cologne?
France
France. Every house in the city was numbered as French revolutionary troops moved in, and the shop on Glockengasse drew 4711; the soldier painting it on from horseback was invented for adverts.
Q 17Guerlain stayed in family hands from 1828 until 1994, when which luxury group bought it?
LVMH
LVMH. Bernard Arnault's group bought the family out, but Jean-Paul Guerlain, who had composed the house's perfumes since the 1950s, stayed on to keep creating them.
Q 18Guerlain's Jicky, launched in 1889, is often called the first modern perfume because it was among the first to use what?
Synthetic ingredients
Synthetic ingredients. Aimé Guerlain blended lab-made vanillin and coumarin with natural essences such as lavender, a marriage of chemistry and nature that modern perfumes still follow.
Q 19Guerlain's Shalimar was inspired by the love story of Shah Jahan and which empress?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal. When she died in 1631 Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as her tomb, and Jacques Guerlain drew on their story for the perfume.
Q 20Ambergris, long prized as a fixative, is produced in the digestive system of which animal?
The sperm whale
The sperm whale. Ambergris is thought to form around the sharp squid beaks the whale cannot digest, and lumps that wash ashore after years at sea have been called floating gold.
A grass. Vetiver is a tall bunchgrass whose fragrant roots grow straight down for three metres or more, so it is also planted in hedges to stop soil washing away.
Q 24Which citrus fruit, grown chiefly along the coast of Calabria, is prized by perfumers for the oil in its peel?
Bergamot
Bergamot. Too sour to eat like an orange, it is grown for its peel oil, which freshens classic eau de cologne and gives Earl Grey tea its flavour.
Q 25Frankincense and myrrh are both harvested by doing what?
Cutting bark
Cutting bark. Boswellia trees give frankincense and thorny Commiphora trees give myrrh: the gum that bleeds from the cuts hardens into lumps called tears, which are then collected.
Q 26The traditional technique of enfleurage captures the scent of flowers using what?
Odourless solid fats
Odourless solid fats. Petals are laid on the fat and replaced every day or so until it is saturated with their scent, which alcohol then draws out as a concentrated flower oil.
Q 27Labdanum, a sticky shrub resin used in perfume, was gathered in ancient times by combing it from the coats of which animals?
Goats
Goats. They browsed on rockrose bushes and the resin stuck to their hair; Herodotus marvelled that so sweet a scent was found in the beards of foul-smelling he-goats.
Q 28The fougère family of forest-floor scents takes its name from the French word for which plant?
Fern
Fern. Houbigant's Fougère Royale of 1882 named the family, though it copied no real fern: its perfumer built the effect from lavender and coumarin, a note that smells of new-mown hay.
Q 29Thierry Mugler's Angel (1992) is considered the first modern example of which fragrance family?
Gourmand
Its notes of praline, vanilla and patchouli made it smell edible; it once outsold No. 5 in France, and the bottle is a star.
Q 30Which Yves Saint Laurent perfume of 1977 caused an outcry over its name?
Opium
Opium. Critics accused Saint Laurent of glamorising drug use and some demanded a new name, but he kept it and the scent was an immediate bestseller all the same.