1928 was a year of notable births: Maya Angelou, penicillin and Winnie the Pooh; Hosni Mubarak, the Three Penny Opera and Malta.In 1928, the world thrilled to Amelia Earhart’s first transatlantic flight and reveled in the summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam.And in 1928, Madeline Smith tended the rows of stately lilies growing in her garden in Bermuda and worked with her father, WB, to figure out how to turn the cream-coloured petals into perfume.The father-daughter team hired an expert who knew how to extract the oils necessary to create distinctive scents. They also consulted with Herbert Scott, Madeline’s American husband, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a background as a chemical engineer. Together, they established The Bermuda Perfumery on the grounds of the Smith family homestead in Bailey’s Bay.For almost 80 years, the perfumery flourished. Madeline and her father expanded their line of fragrances, adding gardenia, sweet pea and jasmine to what was now the Lili Bermuda brand. As tourism boomed and the Island embraced its future as a service rather agrarian economy, the Smiths imported essential oils to produce their flower-themed fragrances. The Bermuda Perfumery, with its quaint buildings and its lush gardens, was a must-see for the Island’s visitors.After Madeline’s death in 1981, her beloved perfumery was passed on to a collection of nephews whose flame for the business didn’t burn as brightly as their aunt’s. Add a decade-long decline in Bermuda’s tourism industry and the business lost its cachet, languishing on the six-acre property it had occupied for most of a century until 2004, when it was sold to entrepreneur Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone.In the last seven years, Lili Bermuda has been reinvented, transformed from a business inching toward obscurity to a thriving operation. In the depths of the Island’s economic recession, noted travel writer Peter Greenberg has dubbed The Bermuda Perfumery “The Best Place in the World For Perfume”.Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone, a French Canadian with a background in international finance, met her Bermudian husband, Kirby, while he was working in Montreal. The couple moved to Bermuda in 2003 and a year later, the vivacious mother-of-three was in the fragrance business.“Perfume was always a passion of mine,” she said, her Quebecois accent adding a touch of the exotic to a subject already infused with mystery. “When I heard the perfumery was on the block, I had to buy it.“I am also a violinist and there is much that is the same between music and perfume. A fragrance has notes, as music does, and it is the combination of those notes that creates something unique, something special like a symphony for the nose.”By the time Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone purchased The Bermuda Perfumery, its inventory had been moved from its original home in Bailey’s Bay to a warehouse on Marginal Wharf in St David’s.A new location became a priority. At a Christmas party in 2004, Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone bumped into Steve Conway, then director of the Bermuda National Trust. Mr Conway told her about Stewart Hall, a Trust property in the historic town of St George’s. He thought it might be a possible home for The Bermuda Perfumery but cautioned, “It’s off the main street. No-one will find you.”“When things are meant to be, they happen,” said Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone as she sat behind her antique desk and juggled phone calls in between impromptu visits from summer interns and sales assistants. “As soon as I saw Stewart Hall, I fell in love with it. Even though it had been unoccupied for two years and was in poor condition, I knew it would be right for the perfumery. We moved the business here in March 2005.”While Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone had studied the art of mixing oils overseas, her true mentor was the late David Botellho, who had been the “nose” of The Bermuda Perfumery for 45 years.“David taught me to remember the scents and how to decompose them. Each scent has hundreds of molecules a rose has 500. So you have to learn to train your memory to recognise what you are smelling. And, like with music, you have to learn which scents are in tune and which are not.”The Bermuda Perfumery now occupies Number 5 Queen Street, the former home of a military commander. Built circa 1707, its forest green wooden push-out blinds, glistening white plaster walls and steep, gabled roof mark it as an impressive example of old Bermuda architecture.Stewart Hall’s former living room and dining room provide a historic frame for pink-packaged bottles of perfume, cologne and eau de toilette clustered on claw-legged tables and in glass-fronted armoires. A faux finish of pink and white stripes lines the centre hallway, giving an elegant 21st century counterpoint to the 300-year-old hand-carved Bermuda cedar staircase curving from the foyer up the second floor where summer student Krista Looby wraps each bottle of Lili Bermuda fragrance.Contrary to Mr Conway’s prediction, visitors are finding the perfumery - in droves. Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone is often the first thing they see as they along Queen Street from St George’s main thoroughfare. Standing in the cedar-framed doorway of Stewart Hall, the diminutive perfumer welcomes her clients with a wide smile and a gracious sweep of her arm, as if to say “Please come in and stay awhile”.On a sunny July afternoon, tourists pack into Stewart Hall. As men stand to one side, women and teenage girls spray samples on scent strips, waving them in the air and sniffing each fragrance.For one elderly gentleman, it’s a bit too much. “Too strong for me,” he says quietly and goes outside to sit on the front step as his wife continues sampling.Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone invites her guests to view a video about the perfumery and take a tour of the property. The group follows her to a small parlour to watch a short promotional film and then outside to a small building at the back of the property, walking through a garden whose brick path is lined with rosemary, hibiscus and frangipani.Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone explains that the low-ceilinged structure, once slaves’ quarters, is now the site of the maceration process that produces the new line of fragrances that have made The Bermuda Perfumery the largest e-tailer on the Island.Standing amid cork-topped bottles of essential oils and a 55-gallon drum of denatured corn ethanol, Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone says she revised Lili Bermuda’s product line to add scents with names like Coral, Alegria (Portuguese for “joy”), Petals and Fresh Water to the traditional Lily, Jasmine and Oleander.“Bermuda is my inspiration,” she tells the group. “I try to capture the essence of the Island the colours, the smells, the textures. I work with between 50 and 100 different oils from the finest companies in the world and mix the combinations that create the effect I am looking for. Then they sit for ten to 12 weeks in the alcohol before the solution is filtered. Then we fill each bottle individually.”Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone’s vision for The Bermuda Perfumery is grounded in a commitment to quality, not quantity. She has no intention of wholesaling to retailers overseas, (“How could I do that? I tie a ribbon on each bottle of perfume. This is a niche business for a niche market. My philosophy is to keep things simple.”), adding that her business model is “based on a product that is handcrafted and has heritage”.The only thing that seems to have Mrs Ramsey-Brackstone stumped these days is figuring out how to attract Bermudians to her thriving business on Queen Street.“I don’t know why, but Bermudians just don’t come. They think they know The Bermuda Perfumery but they don’t. It hurts me. My biggest wish is for them to reacquaint themselves with the business. Americans who come here could buy anything they want at stores like Macy’s but they want to buy our products.”While Bermudians may be turning a blind eye to the latest incarnation of a local attraction, the Americans spending an afternoon at The Bermuda Perfumery were delighted with their visit.“We love the history, the architecture and the customer service, “ said Michael and Audrey Arbuckle of Indianapolis, Indiana. Their taxi driver, Carlton Burgess, had snipped a selection of herbs and blossoms for Audrey as he waited for them to finish their visit.“This is always a good stop,” said Mr Burgess. “The tourists like to visit a Bermuda home and see the architecture, and they like to hear how the perfume is made.”Philadelphia natives Barbara Nigro and Alison Walsh felt The Bermuda Perfumery was a welcome change from what they had seen in Hamilton.“Everything we picked up said ‘made in China,’” said Mr Nigro. “It’s nice to see something that’s actually made here.”To the new “nose” of The Bermuda Perfumery, the comment is music to her ears.Wendy Davis Johnson is interning with The Royal Gazette as a part of the requirements of a master's degree in journalism programme she's pursuing at Harvard Extension School. She can be reached at wendydavisjohnson@fas.harvard.edu.