Brooke Lean | Founder of The Virtue
Jan 27, 2026
Brooke Lean is the founder of The Virtue, an independent perfume brand built around scent as ritual, memory, and modern luxury. Her work explores fragrance as something personal and intentional, created with care rather than speed or spectacle.
Some people see the world. Others smell it. Brooke Lean does both — simultaneously.
Step inside The Virtue's flagship store in New Plymouth, New Zealand, and you're instantly transported to another realm. Everything from the tone of the lighting and the colour of the walls to the textures of the furniture and the almost inaudible music playing in the background has been specifically chosen to help you forget about the outside world. You'll notice all this, but mostly, you'll notice the scent.
"The intention is for it to be a full sensory experience." And that it is.
Brooke Lean began her professional life as a photographer — a wedding photographer, specifically — spending over a decade capturing moments that move people. Based at the foot of Mount Taranaki, surrounded by the wild black sand beaches of New Zealand's North Island West Coast, her work was always about more than composition and light.
What sets Brooke apart is her sensory superpower: a heightened perception that means she experiences sights as smells. Her images always had scent associated with them, whether she noticed it consciously or not. When she experienced a scene, those smells were always intricately attached.
"Being a photographer, I was always trying to tap into that nostalgia, trying to capture a little of that person's soul. I always wanted to be able to move someone through my imagery. Initially, the perfume was a way to add another dimension to that medium."
The transformation from photographer to perfumer wasn't a pivot — it was an evolution. A natural progression to make fragrances that were inextricably connected to her art.
In 2016, Brooke travelled to Cuba following a wedding shoot in Los Angeles. The trip changed everything. Five days of immersion in Havana's texture — the dry tobacco leaves, the warm nights, the rum-soaked air, the vintage cars, the crumbling grandeur.
"The smells came in as a way to reinforce that Cuban experience."
She returned with photographs and something more: the foundation for what would become The Virtue's signature collection. Fragrances like Castro — an intoxicating blend of Cuban tobacco, smoked wood, violet, cedar, dark rum, and Peruvian balsam. Or Cienfuegos and La Habana, each capturing different facets of that whirlwind trip.
In 2017, Brooke and creative partner Gina Fabish opened The Virtue on Devon Street West in New Plymouth. More than a store, it was a statement: a creative hub built on women empowerment.
"We want to empower other women. Give other women permission to do what they want to do, and create."
The space occupies a heritage building from circa 1863 — a former law office whose old safe, once used for important legal documents, now houses raw ingredients. Bergamot. Cedarwood. Frankincense. The building's history adds weight to fragrances designed to transport you through time.
What distinguishes The Virtue from conventional perfume houses is the creative process. Brooke works in collaboration with perfumers in Grasse, France — the world capital of perfumery — but the direction flows from New Zealand. She builds moodboards on her office wall: photographic imagery dabbed with scent, scrawled writing, collected objects that help bring each story to life.
"They interpret my information and my writing and the moodboards and what I think I want the main hero notes to be in the fragrance. From there, they use their own skill set to build the fragrance. They send it back to us in small samples... 'More of this, less of that.'"
The collaboration has now spanned over six years, producing a range of fine fragrances, room sprays, candles, and hand-rolled charcoal incense — all designed in New Plymouth and made in New Zealand.
Her fragrance 1987 captures the scent of Brooke's first school teacher — a woman whose name she can't recall, but whose smell is indelibly marked on her memory. Silver bangles stacked on her wrist. A powerful white floral that elbows its way into a room.
Back Beach captures the Taranaki coastline itself. Bold and complex, like the place. Beautiful but hard to trust. Sea salt and bergamot colliding with smoky birch tar and rose.
Colleagues and collaborators describe Brooke as: "A storyteller working in scent." "Sensory perception that borders on supernatural." "Creates experiences, not just products." "The rare creative who builds businesses and movements."
Industry Recognition
Founder & Creative Director, The Virtue New Zealand Limited
Co-founder, The Virtue creative hub and retail space (2017)
6+ years collaboration with perfumers in Grasse, France
Photography career spanning 10+ years, specialising in weddings and editorial
Featured: NZ Herald Viva, Fashion Quarterly, Ensemble Magazine, Together Journal
Product range: Fine fragrances, room sprays, candles, hand-rolled incense
Stockists: WORLD, Endemic World, and independent retailers across New Zealand
Values: Vegan, cruelty-free, ethically sourced ingredients
Location: Heritage 1863 building, Devon Street West, New Plymouth
Time Travel in a Bottle
The conventional path for a New Zealand creative might lead to Auckland or Sydney. Brooke Lean stayed in New Plymouth — at the foot of a mountain, beside wild black sand beaches — and built something that reaches Grasse.
Her fragrances aren't about smelling pleasant. They're about aromachology: the science of how scent affects emotion. Each creation is designed to trigger memories, alter moods, transport wearers to moments that have deeply imprinted upon them.
"That's the magic of scent — it's a direct passage to the brain. A single whiff, and you're transported back to that moment and place."
In a world of mass-market fragrance, The Virtue offers something rare: scent as art, as therapy, as time travel. And at the centre of it all is a photographer who learned to capture souls in a different medium.
