Sol de Janeiro

Overview

Sol de Janeiro was founded in New York in 2015 by Heela Yang, Camila Pierotti and Marc Capra as a body care brand built on the beach culture of Rio de Janeiro. It is an American company with a Brazilian subject, and its fragrance line grew out of the smell of a single body cream.

That smell is Cheirosa 62, a gourmand of pistachio, salted caramel and vanilla first sold as a mist in 2017. The house has been majority-owned by the L’Occitane Group since 2021.

Every Sol de Janeiro fragrance I track is in the Catalog.

Founding and early history

Yang had worked in marketing at Clinique and Lancôme before living in Brazil; Wikipedia records that she moved from there to New York in 2012. She served as chief executive from the founding. Cosmetics Business names Capra as her co-founder, and both Wikipedia and the Business of Fashion name Pierotti as the third.

The house opened in 2015 with one product, the Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, a body cream whose scent was written by the perfumer Jérôme Epinette. The Business of Fashion reports that the brand entered Sephora less than a year after its debut.

Customers asked for the smell of the cream on its own terms. The answer was the Brazilian Crush Body Fragrance Mist of 2017, later renamed Cheirosa 62. “Cheirosa” is Brazilian Portuguese for smelling good, and the number points to 1962 and “The Girl from Ipanema.” The place of perfume mists in the longer story is set out in the History of Perfume.

House style

The house style is the warm, edible skin scent: nuts, cream, caramel and vanilla over soft woods and musk, with tropical fruit and white flowers as the variations. Epinette has described the aim as gourmand without obvious sweetness.

Cheirosa 62 is the type case. The house lists pistachio and almond on top; heliotrope and jasmine in the heart; salted caramel, vanilla and sandalwood beneath. The effect is sun cream and dessert on warm skin.

The format matters as much as the smell. Most of the line is sold as a perfume mist: a light concentration in a large plastic bottle, meant for hair and body and for generous use. Each numbered mist shares its scent with a body cream, so the fragrance is worn in layers.

The numbers are a naming system rather than a formula count. Each refers to a year in Brazilian popular culture, from the first Carnaval ball in Rio to the bossa nova of 1959.

Key fragrances

Perfumers

Jérôme Epinette is the perfumer of the house. He wrote the scent of the first cream, and Sol de Janeiro says he has worked with it since its inception. He is better known in niche circles for his long association with Byredo.

Fragrantica lists eight further names against the brand. Vincent Kuczinski and Gino Percontino each have a numbered mist. Olivia Jan, Ugo Charron and Clément Gavarry appear on the seasonal limited editions.

Crediting is uneven. The house names a perfumer when it has a story to tell and stays silent otherwise, so several mists in the permanent range have no confirmed author. The house names Robertet as a fragrance partner.

Ownership and business history

The L’Occitane Group bought a majority stake in November 2021, in a deal that valued Sol de Janeiro at US$450 million. Cosmetics Business reported the holding at 83 percent. The Business of Fashion puts the brand’s sales for 2020 at $60 million.

Growth after the sale was steep. The Business of Fashion reports sales of €474 million for the nine months to December 2023, up 199 percent on the year before. In the group’s year to March 2025 Sol de Janeiro supplied 31.6 percent of net sales of €2.8 billion.

L’Occitane itself left the Hong Kong stock exchange in October 2024 and is now privately held. Sol de Janeiro develops its fragrances with outside perfumers and sells them under its own name; there is no fragrance licence.

I chart who makes and licenses this house’s fragrances on the Fragrance License Map.

Present position

Sol de Janeiro is the second-largest brand in the L’Occitane Group by sales, behind L’Occitane en Provence. Heela Yang left the company in April 2026 after eleven years, and Jordan Saxemard was promoted from chief marketing and digital officer to chief executive.

The range in 2026 has three tiers: the numbered Cheirosa mists, a rolling programme of limited summer editions, and two new lines. The Cheiroso cologne mists arrived in July 2026. The Intense Perfume Mists followed in August at a higher concentration.

Historical assessment

The house’s contribution is a format. The body mist had been a mass-market product for decades; Sol de Janeiro put it in prestige retail at a prestige price and made it a way into fragrance for a new generation of buyers. Much of the industry has since followed with mists of its own.

As composition the work is modest and I think it should be described that way. Cheirosa 62 is a well-judged gourmand in the line that runs back to Mugler’s Angel, lighter and saltier than most of its relatives. I rate it as a real signature. The rest of the range is pleasant variation on one idea.

The open question is durability. A house built on one smell and a stream of limited editions depends on fashion, and the pace of launches since 2024 suggests the house knows it.

Sources