Fleur de Sante
Swedish flower-based skincare since 1980.
Knut Wulff, born in Malmö in 1913, spent a long career building cosmetics businesses in Sweden before launching Fleur de Santé in 1980. The venture was co-owned with Fortia, the publicly traded holding company of pharmaceutical giant Pharmacia, and positioned at the intersection of skincare and natural fragrance at a moment when botanical formulation was a point of genuine distinction rather than routine marketing language. Wulff was among the earliest European cosmetics entrepreneurs to formulate exclusively from vegetable-derived extracts. Fleur de Santé carried that commitment throughout its early decades, drawing on both French and Swedish flower extracts — a deliberate pairing that gave the brand its dual identity, neither fully Scandinavian nor Mediterranean but trading on both registers simultaneously. The brand survived Wulff's death in 2002 and continues to produce skincare and fragrance products under the Fleur de Santé name. Its positioning remains accessible rather than luxury, prioritising botanical ingredients at an everyday price point — a philosophy now common in the category but ahead of its time when Wulff established it.
