As the title of the work suggests, perfume is central to the plot, so much so that one could even call it the second principal character after the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. In most modern languages, the word for perfume is derived from the Latin couplet per fumus, which means “through smoke,” referring to the manner in which perfume adorns the body in a mist. The origins of perfume date back at least to the 2nd millennium BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. While human delight in fragrant scents likely originated before that as a naturally desirable aspect of reality, perfume as a crafted and artificial product is an invention that likely began in Babylon and was further refined in various times and cultures.

Biblical records mention perfume and scented oils in passing, assuming general knowledge in the reader, and there is even evidence that the island of Cyprus may have contained a working factory for perfume on a much larger scale. Arab and Persian technicians perfected the process of scent distillation in the early medieval period—very similar to the process learned by Grenouille in Baldini’s workshop—using raw materials like spices, herbs, and aromatic woods to produce distilled essential oils that could then be used for various purposes, including the creation of perfumes and scented oils used for sacred as well as secular purposes.