Funmi Monet, a licensed therapist turned fragrance expert, has launched a fragrance brand at Sephora.
Monet, who says she was once told she didn’t have enough followers to build a fragrance brand, built an audience on TikTok and Instagram as a fragrance voice. Now that Influxious is on the market, she told AfroTech how she built it.
What is Influxious?
“Influxious comes from two words: influx and luxurious,” Monet told AfroTech. “I actually came up with the name for a high school project almost twenty years ago and never let it go. I always knew I was going to do something with it; I just didn’t know what yet.”
She added, “Influx represents everything that moves through us and shapes who we become: our culture, heritage, memories, experiences, the people we love, the places we’ve been, even the music we grew up listening to.”
Monet, a former therapist, says she is interested in what happens when people become open to change, such as new abundance, love or a new version of themselves.
“Luxurious represents my belief that all of those parts of ourselves deserve to be celebrated rather than hidden. And when I say luxury, I don’t only mean luxury in the traditional sense of price or exclusivity,” she explained. “I mean luxury as a feeling. The idea that you deserve beauty, pleasure, self-expression, and a life that feels good to you. We all deserve a luxurious life.”
Monet says she is building a fragrance house, not influencer merch, and that the brand needed an identity that could grow beyond its founder.
From perfume counter to founder
Monet worked a perfume counter at Dillard’s, went to graduate school for therapy, trained as an ISIPCA-certified perfumer and is now Influxious’s founder. She says she uses each experience in her work at the company.
“Dillard’s taught me that fragrance is incredibly personal,” said Monet. “Therapy taught me how to listen, understand people, and stay calm under pressure. And ISIPCA gave me the technical vocabulary to sit with my perfumers and articulate what’s missing instead of just saying, ‘This isn’t the vibe.’”
“What surprised me is that running a business day-to-day is mostly about people and problem-solving,” she continued. “It’s reading the room in a Sephora meeting, managing a team, making decisions with incomplete information, and staying calm when you’re told you sold through three months of inventory in six hours. I spent years as a therapist learning to listen before I reacted. I use that skill constantly as a founder. The therapist never left the room. She just has a fragrance company now.”
Self-funding the brand
Monet self-funded Influxious with $225,000 of her own savings, she says, which went toward fragrance development, formulation, testing, packaging, branding and building a team before the first bottle was filled.
“Self-funding taught me discipline,” said Monet. “When it’s your savings, every decision is yours to live with. You learn the difference between what the business actually needs and what’s simply nice to have, and every dollar has to have a purpose.”
She added, “There was a morning I woke up with $7 in my personal account and still turned down money that came with the wrong strings attached. Self-funding gave me the freedom to protect the vision and execute the brand the way I believed it needed to be done.”
Monet said she probably would have moved faster and learned less with outside funding.
Influxious passed $1 million in sales in its first three weeks without venture capital, according to Monet, who says it “proved that being undercapitalized didn’t mean the idea was underpowered.”
Her original plan was to launch at Sephora in 2027, but the timeline accelerated after the fragrance team smelled the collection in April. In late September 2026, Influxious will enter 11 Sephora stores across the country.
“Beyond retail, the priority is community. I want to continue doing in-store events, masterclasses, coffee meetups, and supporting the fragrance communities and smell clubs that helped us get here,” said Monet. “I’m still a creator. I still love perfume, still make recommendations, and still want to show up for the audience that built this with me. Long-term, I want Influxious to become a global fragrance house that can stand independently of me. But I never want us to become so big that we lose the intimacy and community that made the brand special in the first place. The goal is scale without losing soul.”