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Naples Perfumer Stacy Bee Turns Memory Into Fragrance

With her bespoke fragrance studio, Bee Apothecary, blends emotion, memory and plant-based ingredients into deeply personal scents.

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When Dorothy “Doro” Bush Koch, daughter of former President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, reconnected with her friend, Naples perfumer Stacy Bee, she was grieving her parents’ passing and wanting to capture their essence in a scent. Doro sent Stacy a list of the contents of their medicine cabinets, along with a swirl of intimate recollections: the feeling of being at the summer home in Maine, the gardenias her mother tended.

Together, the women forged two scents to honor the couple: Pearls of Love, a soft floral tribute to Barbara, and CAVU, named for the Navy aviation term Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited, which captured the president’s clear-eyed optimism.

Doro wept when she first sprayed Pearls of Love. “She told me, ‘This smells of my whole world, of my mother,’” the perfumer recalls. Today, both scents have joined Stacy’s permanent collection—a tight lineup of signature fragrances and bespoke commissions made entirely of natural, plant-based ingredients.

At the heart of Stacy’s approach lies the unique neuroscience of fragrance. Unlike other senses, smell bypasses the brain’s relay station and travels straight to the limbic system, where emotions and memories reside. Stacy believes scent can shape how we move through the world by providing a sensory focus and inviting us to pause in the moment.

The former marketing and public relations exec launched her luxury fragrance brand, Bee Apothecary, in Naples in 2022. But the roots of her work stretch much further—to childhood walks with her father through Wisconsin tree farms. “Even as a child, I recognized the smell of different trees and flowers, the scent of fresh mint and morels and the way corn smells as it becomes ready to harvest,” she says. “I could somehow break it all down.”

She honed her instincts during a stretch in Mumbai. There, as CEO of the nonprofit trade group U.S.-India Investors Forum, she befriended oil manufacturers and an organic chemist, who taught her to blend oils and formulate perfumes. Spending time in an ashram helped crystallize her vision for a scent brand that builds on memory and connection to capture one’s personal essence. “You’re learning to be calm, which allows you to recharge and focus on your passions,” she says. Many of her scents harken to the country, with elements like tuberose and jasmine sourced from farms in Southern India and lavender from the Kashmir Valley. 

Now based in Naples, Stacy creates oil-based rollers and traditional spray perfumes that eschew conventional synthetics in favor of plant-based, paraben-free ingredients. Her home studio is like an alchemist’s workshop, where she tinkers with raw botanical treasures: sticky mimosa absolute from Tamil Nadu, thick cedar and cypress, potent vetiver extract pulled from tree roots. 

For custom commissions, Stacy blends each fragrance by hand, drawing from interviews, often conducted in clients’ homes, to better understand the memories, spaces and emotions they hope to capture. A grandfather’s pipe tobacco might anchor a base note, while a childhood orchard might inspire a bright top note.

Emotions, setting and climate are also considered. The perfumer talks about how summer heat awakens skin’s chemistry, transforming subtle notes into powerful statements, while winter’s chill allows complex fragrances to unfold gradually. Without synthetics to artificially prolong lighter notes, bright florals and citruses tend to shine briefly before fading—a natural, beautiful impermanence, which she often balances with deeper base notes, like woods and earthy patchouli. For those preferring longevity, she suggests oil-based rollers, which evaporate slowly and can be easily carried and reapplied. 

Once the concept is clear, Stacy draws from her library of about 600 preset blends, sourced from master perfumeries, and layers on raw botanicals to customize the scent: a drop of pink lotus resin here, a touch from a fragrance stick dipped into a potent frangipani extract there. Thanks to her direct sourcing relationships, she can trace every bottle back to its origin, ensuring each fragrance tells a story as vivid as the memories it’s designed to evoke. Apothecary logs document every scent, preserving the formulas for easy restocking—or for future generations to carry forward.

The Bee Apothecary line retains the same principles but moves beyond expert blending. For her three signature scents (with one more on the way), Stacy builds each fragrance from the ground up, layering the raw extracts into a plant-based carrier. She collaborates with a master perfumer, whose background includes clients like Mugler and Tom Ford. The two exchange ideas as they test and retest how the fragrance unfolds over time, balancing the notes until they land on a final composition, which is produced by her manufacturer in Cleveland. 

The brand’s signature scent, Beaches & White Flowers, is designed as an olfactory portrait of Naples, recalling the spring jasmine and gardenias blooming at Wilderness Country Club, her favorite golf course. A cypress base note nods to the trees around town. “It’s essentially vacation in a bottle,” she says. Birdie, another golf-inspired perfume in the works, has notes of Australian lemon myrtle to create a unisex scent.

As she sees it, Stacy’s job is to distill what matters. “[We’re] recreating memories and experiences that you want to remember,” she says. “It’s about commemorating the positive.”