When influencer Funmi Monet was selected for Sephora’s 2024 Accelerate cohort, she didn’t have a single product and Influxious existed only as a concept. Two years later, the fragrance brand rooted in her Nigerian culture and Black storytelling is launching on Sephora’s website.

Starting July 27, the retailer will carry four fragrances—Well Loved, Magic Hour, High Life and Gold Standard—priced at $150 for 50-ml. bottles and $35 for 10-ml. travel sizes, plus a $25 discovery set. Influxious will also sell the collection directly to consumers, where customers who purchase the discovery set will receive a $25 credit toward a 50-ml. bottle. Influxious joins other Black-owned fragrance brands at Sephora, including Brown Girl Jane, Harlem Perfume Co., Forvr Mood and World of Chris Collins.

“I have literally traveled the world smelling fragrances from some of the best brands worldwide, and I’ve always still felt like there was a place missing for storytelling that reflected my culture and my experiences as a Black woman,” says Monet, who has amassed nearly 900,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. “I realized that there’s so much room here for a brand to come in and share relevant storytelling, but also provide a unique luxury experience.”

Metaphorically whisking away wearers on a vacation, Magic Hour is reminiscent of a spicy watermelon margarita, while Well Loved is Influxious’s version of a skin scent. It features vanilla, magnolia and shea butter notes. The shea butter note is a nod to Monet’s childhood, when her mother would apply shea butter to her skin after baths. Monet says the scent is “like you just got a hug from your favorite person in the world.”

The warm Gold Standard has caramel, saffron and amber accords. High Life, by contrast, draws inspiration from Lagos’s nightlife and Detty December celebrations. The name refers to the West African music genre that fuses Afrobeats, jazz and funk. Blueberry musk, raspberry and hibiscus are among the notes. Monet says, “It’s definitely a compliment magnet.”

Each fragrance incorporates a Nigerian ginger note at the suggestion of Gino Percontino, a senior perfumer at Mane who helped develop the collection. Monet recalls, “He said, ‘I love the idea of having a common thread within the collection because they’re all meant to be layered and enjoyed together, but it also feels like I’m putting a piece of you in each bottle.’”

The fragrances are housed in faceted bottles that evoke gemstones. Monet explains, “I always talked about on social media how I collect fragrances like they’re infinity stones, so when we were designing our bottle, I said, ‘Well, these are collectible bottles. These are bottles I want people to feel proud of when they put on their counter and when they put on their vanity.’”

A former practicing licensed therapist, Monet began creating content in 2018 after her own therapist encouraged her to find a creative outlet that didn’t have anything to do with work. Fragrance became her niche around the pandemic when #PerfumeTok took off. “For me, it was about finding a community to connect with other like-minded people that have the same interests as me,” she says. “It was an online scrapbook and then it typhooned into this huge thing.”

To better understand the science behind scents, Monet attended the perfumery school ISIPCA in Versailles, France. The experience has enabled her to communicate more effectively with both Influxious’s perfumers and chemists and her digital audience. She’s brought followers along on the journey of building Influxious over the past two years.

“Most brands, when they’re launching, they give themselves a month or two to get people really excited and hyped, and then now you have product,” she says. “But I think, for me, it was a good move because now my audience has seen how much I’ve personally invested, not just financially, but also educationally and really making sure we have the right infrastructure to make shopping with us a good experience.”

Influxious has raised about $500,000 toward a $1 million pre-seed round to support its launch. The round is led by early-stage venture capital firm Radix Innovation Capital, with participation from angel investors and friends and family. Monet plans to circle back to conversations with investors post-launch to show early results. Looking ahead, Monet hopes to grow Influxious into a global brand and demonstrate that influencers, despite their mixed track record in beauty, can build enduring businesses.

She says, “I want to really show Sephora that influencers can also launch successful businesses without, in my case, having a major backing from a VC or having somebody else that’s coming in and running the show and I just put my name on it.”