Frankincense in Perfumery: From Avignon to Modern Incense Scents

Frankincense in perfumery is the resin and its distilled or extracted derivatives from Boswellia trees — chiefly Boswellia sacra, B. carterii, B. frereana and B. papyrifera — used as a top-to-heart material that reads as resinous, peppery-green and faintly citric, closer to pine and pepper than to the vanillic sweetness of benzoin. Perfumers work with it as steam-distilled essential oil, CO₂ extract, resinoid or absolute, prized for the lift of monoterpenes such as α-pinene and limonene and for the drier, more tenacious depth that incensole acetate and diterpene acids bring to the base. Its role in fine fragrance owes less to antiquity’s temple smoke than to a specific modern turn: Comme des Garçons’ incense-themed releases around the turn of the millennium, including Avignon, made frankincense a recognizable genre on its own, and the material has since anchored dozens of niche incense fragrances built alongside myrrh, labdanum and benzoin.

What is frankincense, and how does it become a perfume material?

Frankincense, also traded under its older name olibanum, is the hardened gum-resin that seeps from cuts made in the bark of Boswellia trees. Harvesters score the trunk in dry, rocky terrain. Most commercially significant frankincense today comes from Oman and Yemen, where Boswellia sacra grows; from Somalia, home to both Boswellia carterii and the resin known locally as maydi from Boswellia frereana; and from Ethiopia and Sudan, where Boswellia papyrifera is tapped. The resin exudes as a milky liquid, air-dries into amber to greenish tears, and is graded by size, colour and purity before export.

For perfumery, the raw tears are processed in one of three main ways. Steam distillation yields an essential oil that captures the volatile monoterpenes but leaves behind the heavier, non-volatile resin acids. Solvent extraction produces a resinoid, and further alcohol washing gives an absolute — both fuller and closer to the material’s actual balsamic weight. CO₂ extraction, increasingly used since it runs at lower temperature, tends to preserve a broader slice of the original resin, including trace amounts of incensole acetate that are largely lost in steam distillation.

What does frankincense smell like in perfume?

The opening is bright and slightly sharp: pine, lemon zest and a faint pepperiness, driven mainly by α-pinene alongside limonene. This top note is where frankincense differs most obviously from myrrh, which reads darker and more bitter-medicinal from the start. As the material dries down, the profile turns resinous and dusty, with a smoky, church-like quality that is not sweet in the way benzoin or labdanum are. Incensole acetate, a diterpene found in varying amounts across Boswellia species, is often credited with the characteristic incense impression — a soft, slightly narcotic haze distinct from ordinary pine or citrus terpenes.

Species matters. Omani Boswellia sacra oil is often described as cleaner and more citric, partly attributed to its content of fatty esters such as octyl acetate, which lends a fruity-green edge not typical of other frankincenses. Somali and Ethiopian material tends to read heavier and more overtly resinous, with less of that fresh top note.

From temple smoke to perfumer’s palette

Frankincense’s documented history runs through the incense trade routes of southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, through ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern ritual use, and into the liturgical practice of the Christian church, where olibanum has been burned in censers for centuries. That ecclesiastical association is precisely what later perfumers borrowed. For most of the twentieth century, frankincense appeared in fine fragrance mainly as a minor accent within ambery and oriental compositions, rarely as the declared subject of a perfume in its own right.

Avignon and the turn toward incense as a genre

That changed with Comme des Garçons’ incense-themed releases at the turn of the millennium, of which Avignon is the best known. Named for the French city that hosted the medieval papacy and its cathedral, the fragrance was built to evoke the interior of a stone church thick with burning resin — dry, smoky, almost austere, with none of the vanillic sweetness typical of earlier oriental perfumes. Paired with companion scents evoking incense traditions elsewhere, it helped establish incense fragrances as a distinct, recognisable category rather than a supporting note buried in an amber base, and it set a template — abstract, resinous, restrained — that many later niche releases have followed.

Frankincense-forward perfumes since Avignon

A number of releases have kept frankincense as the stated centrepiece rather than a background note. Eau Duelle from Diptyque plays frankincense’s coolness against vanilla’s warmth in a single accord built around temperature contrast. L’Air du Désert Marocain from Tauer sets frankincense against amber and cumin for a dry, sun-baked effect closer to desert air than church interior. Others in this vein lean explicitly on the ecclesiastical reference in their naming and structure, treating the resin’s smoky, mineral quality as the whole point of the composition rather than a supporting layer.

Frankincense’s perfumery chemistry

Only a fraction of this profile survives steam distillation; resinoids, absolutes and CO₂ extracts carry more of the non-volatile, base-note material, which is one reason the choice of extract shapes how a frankincense note actually performs in a finished perfume.

Frankincense next to myrrh and benzoin in an incense accord

Perfumers rarely use frankincense alone. Combined with myrrh, it gains a darker, more bitter and medicinal undertone. Combined with benzoin, it softens toward sweetness and gains tenacity, since benzoin’s balsamic acids act as a fixative for the more volatile frankincense terpenes. This three-way pairing — frankincense for the smoky top, myrrh for depth, benzoin for warmth and hold — is close to how many modern incense and amber accords are actually built, whether the goal is a literal church-incense effect or a more abstract resinous base.

Buying and blending: what form to use

The choice of extract matters as much as the choice of species. Essential oil gives a bright, mostly top-note impression and evaporates relatively quickly on its own; it is often used to add lift to a heavier resin base rather than to carry the incense effect through the whole composition. Resinoid and absolute carry more of the tears’ original weight and are better suited to anchoring a drydown. For a perfumer or home blender working from raw material, tincturing the tears directly in alcohol is a slower but transparent way to capture a fuller spectrum of the resin’s character than a single commercial extract might offer.

• frankincense
• boswellia
• incense
• resins
• perfumery