Marina Barcenilla

About

Marina Barcenilla is an independent perfumer of Riojan origin, based in London, who also works as a space scientist and fragrance educator. She is the nose behind Marina Barcenilla Parfums and the science-led brand AromAtom.

She began creating fragrance in 1997 and developed her skills largely by teaching herself, going on to mentor and train others. In June 2011 she launched The Perfume Garden, a small artisan perfumery in the West Country, which became Marina Barcenilla Parfums after her perfume India won the Fragrance Foundation UK Award for Best New Independent Fragrance in 2016. Black Osmanthus won the same award in 2017, and her mixed-media AromAtom fragrance Out of This World was a 2018 finalist for Perfume Extraordinaire.

Alongside perfume she studied science. She holds a first class honours degree in planetary science with astronomy and has carried out doctoral research on detecting spectroscopic signs of life on Mars. Her outreach project AromAtom, founded in 2017, uses the smells of space to teach science. In July 2021 she was named an Academician of the Spanish Academy of Perfume and awarded a medal for two decades of work as a perfumer and for her science communication.

She founded the School of Creative Perfumery, which teaches in English and in Spanish, and she creates fragrances for other brands, immersive events, museum exhibitions and art installations.

Her own perfumes are built from named natural materials and come with short stories about the experiences behind them. Indian jasmine, frankincense, sandalwood and rose recur, and the range moves from warm spiced florals to smoky leather and fresh herbal styles.