When Emma couldn't find anything to suit her sensitive skin, she turned her issue into a thriving business

Sensitive skin is all too common; studies say that over fifty per cent of Aussies struggle with the issue, and as anyone who has sensitive skin will know, it can be near impossible to find the right products.

While many wish they could just create something perfect for themselves, it's simply not realistic for most.

But there are the select few who can create art out of necessity. Emma J Leah is one of those people.

In the '90s, Leah decided she needed to fill a gap in her own existence. Today, she's turned that creation into a flourishing business, a perfumery called Fleurage.

She came into perfumery through aromatherapy. Leah tells nine.com.au that she always had "a deep interest in smell and its effect on people psychologically", but the therapeutic and wellness aspect of aromatherapy wasn't exactly for her.

That's when she started exploring skincare, and after plenty of research, she realised she had the tools to not only make something suitable for her sensitive skin, but also to create beautiful scents.

"All perfumers will tell you they get there because of their own need," she explains.

"I didn't like the smells that were around. So it was moving towards things that made me happy."

Emma J Leah created her perfumery after noticing a gap in the natural perfume market.

She explains that typically, there are two avenues to get into perfumery. The first is to align yourself with a European company or school, and eventually join that company, but there are a few barriers.

"Your learning then becomes part of their stable, and that's fine, but it's a little bit closed off to Australians," she says.

"Especially female Australians, and especially female Australians over the age of 25, which I was by the time I thought I should probably do something about this in an official capacity."

So, Leah decided to go with the second option, which was to pursue an independent, self-taught learning path, allowing her to focus on her passion for historical perfumery.

"Because of that interest, I realised that natural perfumery had gone more towards aromatherapy, and what we needed it to do was come back to that beauty that we all recognise in perfumery," she says.

"It was all natural ingredients, it was just beautiful things made with beautiful ingredients. And that's where I wanted to go."

She now creates her own line of perfumes after following her passions.

In 2007, she opened Fleurage, her first perfumery, located in an Art Deco boutique in Melbourne's South Yarra.

It was a small boutique of products created by Leah, including perfumes and skincare, but when customers realised that the woman serving them was also the woman creating the products, they began to ask if she could create bespoke products.

Thankfully for those customers, there are two kinds of perfumers. The first is ingredients-based, which can become tricky to create bespoke perfumes when customers don't understand the interaction and effects of combining different scents.

Leah, however, works based on a customer's vision, able to create a scent for them based on a vision board.

"All of your tastes are interrelated," she explains.

"So the music that you like, the colours that you like, the foods that you like, they are all part of an individualised taste palette.

"So if you can tap into the colours, music, and taste, then you can direct it towards the smell."

Leah creates scents based off of a vision rather than specific ingredients.

Today, Fleurage has moved to the Gold Coast, where Emma and her team sell perfumes, create bespoke products, and run workshops to teach others the art of perfumery.

Leah has been running Fleurage workshops since 2014, and over the years, she's managed to perfect the balance of keeping it fun and interesting while also being able to convey the necessary technical elements of perfume making.

But she says there's one big mistake many attendees make when they arrive.

"They think they're going to make a commercial masterpiece in an hour," she says.

"I mean, the fact that we've made it so that they can make a beautiful perfume in an hour is actually quite a feat."

Plenty of people come in wanting to recreate their favourite scent, but not only is it logistically impossible because of access to ingredients, but also because of time restraints.

Leah explains that it's a common misconception that with the right knowledge and training, a flawless perfume can come together in a matter of hours, but with the amount of testing involved, it's actually much closer to a matter of years.