Fragrance house

Mülhens

Mülhens’ fragrance lineage traces to Cologne in the late eighteenth century, when merchant Wilhelm Mülhens received a secret recipe as a wedding gift and marketed the resulting perfumed water as “Aqua Mirabilis.” By 1800, the Mülhens family business was recorded as a Cologne-water manufacturer based in Glockengasse. In 1810, after Napoleon’s decree required medicinal recipes to be disclosed, Mülhens and other Cologne-water manufacturers began declaring the product as fragrance water rather than medicine. After an 1881 court ruling forced Ferdinand Mülhens to abandon the Farina name, the company adopted the house number 4711 on its label, a change associated with the business’s international rise. The business later developed Tosca in 1921 and Sir as a shaving-water brand in 1935. In December 2006, Procter & Gamble sold 4711, Tosca, Sir Irisch Moos and Extase to Mäurer & Wirtz. Mülhens is especially associated with 4711 Original Eau de Cologne, now owned by Mäurer & Wirtz; Acqua Colonia was introduced under the 4711 umbrella in 2009.