Tuvache Perfumes is an American perfume company launched in the 1930s.  Tuvache wanted to be a French perfume company during a time when American women only wanted French perfumes, and that’s why they took the name, going so far as to create a Madame deTuvache pen name for all articles written about the company. Madame Tuvache was a character straight out of Madame Bovary. 

Tuvache’s real founder was a woman named Bernadine Angus, and the company was sold after her and her husband’s death in the ‘60s by Germaine Monteil.  Yardley of London eventually wound up with Germaine Monteil, and that was sold to Jovan, which was owned by Coty.  Somewhere in that march to being an ex-perfume company, their signature and most famous perfume, Jungle Gardenia, was sadly discontinued. 

Coty launched some version of Jungle Gardenia in the ‘90s that was pretty much crap, and the public agreed with that and wouldn’t buy it, so that was over.  Evyan Perfumes wound up with the trademarked name Jungle Gardenia, and Irma Shorell wound up with the Tuvache trademarked name.

And that was fun!  But let’s talk about Tuvache’s best perfume, Jungle Gardenia, and what a perfume!  Actresses wore it – Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Joan Bennett, Annette Funicello, Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, and Fay Wray wore it while filming King Kong.  It’s even rumored that Frank Sinatra liked a drop or two of Jungle Gardenia. In an interview, with Lisa Robinson from Vanity Fair before his death, Michael Jackson revealed he was a fan of Tuvache Jungle Gardenia and sometimes wore it.

Sadly, Tuvache Jungle Gardenia fell out of favor until the 1970s and ‘80s, but got some juice when Bob Barker used to declare on “Truth or Consequences” that it was the sexiest perfume he had ever smelled.

Tuvache made other perfumes like Algiers, Arabia, Cossack, Highlander, Jungle Jasmin, Moroccan Rose, Sumatra, Tuvara, but none ever caught on like Jungle Gardenia