Alumna makes scents out of SFSU Chemistry degree

For San Francisco State University alumna Ashley Santiago (B.S., ’16), scent is memory: tied to a family member’s favorite perfume, a moment in high school or her freshman year of college. And it’s not just a reflection of the past. For Santiago, scent is also her future.

Santiago is the youngest perfumer at Givaudan, the world’s largest manufacturer of flavors, fragrances and active cosmetic ingredients. She is the only American perfumer at Givaudan’s Fine Fragrance Creative Centre in Paris, where fragrances are developed for major fashion houses and beauty brands such as YSL, Prada, Marc Jacobs and Maison Margiela.

Her path to that role — and to Paris, where she lives today — began early. Since she was a teenager in the Bay Area, she’s been obsessed with fragrances. She read blogs about perfume, researched ingredients and even asked her parents to drive her to department stores so she could smell the fragrances there. 

“In high school, you start thinking, ‘What are you going to do?’ I Googled, ‘Where do fragrances come from?’” Santiago said. “I didn’t even realize there was a person making them. I just thought it was a factory or something.”

She soon learned that becoming a perfumer requires extensive training and a Chemistry degree. That realization pointed her toward Chemistry — and ultimately to SFSU.

She chose SFSU for its cost and proximity: It was closer to her home than her high school. Though she disliked chemistry in high school, she found inspiring instructors at SFSU and graduated with honors. She cherished her time at the University, citing supportive professors and lasting friendships. She was the only student in her program set on a career in perfume design.

Chemistry gave her a new way of seeing the world at the molecular level, she says.

“Having that basis really opened up another facet of the fragrance world to me. I could start to see the molecules, not just the ingredients,” she said. “It [also] showed me that you don’t need to be passionate about something to be good at it and to get something out of it. I gained an appreciation for chemistry, even if it wasn’t my number one passion, because it gave me some really key skills to create perfume.”

After SFSU, Santiago moved to France to pursue a graduate program in Scent Design and Creation at ISIPCA (Institut supérieur international du parfum, de la cosmétique et de l'aromatique alimentaire). The program focused on the chemistry of cosmetics, particularly fragrance, which is why she needed a chemistry background.

She completed her master’s degree in 2019 before joining Givaudan’s perfumery school, a highly competitive four-year program. It accepts only a handful of students each year from roughly 2,000 applicants. 

In her day-to-day work at Givaudan, Santiago collaborates with brands to develop fragrances. For each product, she considers the target customer.

“I really like to create a story around that person, because I love storytelling and I think fragrance is really an extension of that,” she said. “Then I’ll think, ‘Is this for day? Is it for night? Is it for the whole year? Is it for hot weather? What region am I creating for?’” Within those contexts, there may be fragrance notes she needs to hit. For example, if she’s developing a summer scent, it might include notes of pineapple, she says. She may also consider complementary scents, like frangipani. For a creamy floral, she might add sandalwood; for a more traditionally masculine scent, cedar.

When she’s not creating scents for clients, she’s developing her own fragrance line. Late 2025, she launched French Cowboy, a perfume brand that pairs tradition with contemporary creativity and renewed audacity (carried locally by Ministry of Scent in San Francisco). The brand is a nod to the long history of French ‘Haute Parfumerie’ while also embracing a sense of youthful rebellion.

“[Perfumery is] a very old tradition and closed off. You have to follow this 10-year course in order to influence the market,” she said. “I see a real beauty in the [French] technique and the attention to detail, and how much they’ve thrown themselves into the minutiae of fragrances. At the same time, it’s very restrained. There are a lot of roadblocks. There’s a certain way of doing things, and it makes you want to break the rules. That’s where we have the cowboy part of the brand.”

Santiago is in the prime of her career, but she already has a vision for the legacy she hopes to create: an olfactory companion for people’s lives.

“If you wear a fragrance for a certain time of your life, and then you stop, when you go back to that fragrance, it immediately takes you back to that time in your life, like an olfactive companion,” she said. “I love that people are going to be making memories while wearing my fragrance, and when they smell my fragrance, it’ll also bring back that rush of memories.”

Interested in pursuing a Chemistry degree? Check out SFSU’s Chemistry and Biochemistry program.