Following the Light: An Interview with Taraneh Derakshan, Founder of NEH.
In a world where fragrance is often treated as a luxury accessory, Tara invites us to experience scent in an entirely different way. As the founder of NEH, the mindful perfume house blending master perfumery with neuroscience, sound healing, and intentional ritual, Tara has redefined what it means to wear a fragrance.
Fresh from winning Fragrance of the Year 2025 for The Light at the Universal Beauty Awards—and celebrated as a finalist in the UK Fragrance Foundation Innovation Award—she continues to challenge traditional notions of beauty and wellbeing. In this interview, Tara shares the journey behind NEH, the philosophy that shapes her creations, and the power of scent as a tool for emotional awareness and transformation.
What inspired you to create NEH as a mindful perfume house that blends fragrance with emotional wellbeing and self-healing?
NEH was born from a moment of truth – a homecoming to myself.
A sacred ceremony reconnected me with my full name, Taraneh, and made me realise I had drifted far from my own essence. It also revealed that scent had been my first language all along, the bridge between emotion, memory, and identity. The last three letters of my name, NEH, echo nez, “nose” in French, which feels poetic given that perfumery is both my greatest passion and the gift I hadn’t fully stepped into until that moment.
Returning to myself showed me how deeply our inner state shapes our mood, energy, and reality. I became fascinated by the way the mind, body, soul, and the subtle power of scent interact. How fragrance, sound, and intention can shift our inner world and the power they have to guide us back to who we truly are.
My background in perfumery showed me the beauty of fragrance; my healing work taught me its power. NEH grew from my own daily practice, the fragrances, affirmations, and frequency music were tools I used to regulate my nervous system and return to presence, and I wanted to share that experience with others.
It’s perfume as ritual; a way to make the invisible visible.
And it’s rooted in true mastery, crafted at a 25–30% concentrate with the highest-quality raw materials in collaboration with the master perfumers at Flair Paris.
Congratulations on winning Fragrance of the Year 2025.
What does this award for The Light mean to you and NEH’s mission?
It feels like a quiet nod from the universe, confirmation that staying true to my vision was worth it.
The Light was created during one of the hardest chapters of my life. It carries the energy of choosing hope when everything feels heavy, of remembering joy even when shadows linger.
To have it recognised on this level tells me that people felt my intention and what NEH stands for: emotional resonance, energetic depth, and scent as a tool for remembering our inner radiance.
It’s bigger than an award – it’s an affirmation of our mission.
NEH was also a finalist for the Innovation Award—what do you feel is most innovative about The Light and its multi-sensory design?
Innovation, for me, begins with meaning.
The Light, and the full Altered States Collection, was built as a multi-sensory ritual:
- Fragrance designed around emotional release
- Affirmations that shift internal narratives
- Requency music that regulates the nervous system
- A cap that doubles as a meditation stone
- NFC technology that unlocks guided practices
It’s a fragrance that engages the mind, body, and energetic field simultaneously – grounding you, uplifting you, shifting you. That’s where the innovation lives: in making perfume an experience that alters your state from the inside out.
You describe NEH fragrances as rituals rather than perfumes. How do scent, sound, and intention come together to create these experiences?
Ritual begins when we carve out space to meet ourselves in presence.
Scent enters the limbic system. Sound shifts our energetic frequency. Intention shapes our reality.
When you weave all three together, you create a portal – a moment where you step out of autopilot and into self-awareness.
Every NEH fragrance has:
• its own emotional theme
• its own affirmation
• its own frequency soundscape
• its own tactile ritual
That combination turns the simple act of scenting into a ceremony – a pause, a breath, a return.
What emotional journey were you hoping to evoke with The Light, and how were the affirmations and frequency music developed to support it?
The Light is about liberation – releasing what weighs you down and remembering the joy that was never lost. I wanted it to feel like standing in a sunbeam after a long winter or exhaling after holding your breath for too long.
The affirmation, “I remember that I can choose the light and cast away the heavy,” speaks to the polarity of darkness and light – how both are necessary in our human experience, and how reclaiming joy is a conscious choice.
The frequency music blends heart-opening tones and soft, energetic elevation to deepen that emotional release. Together, they guide you into ease, softness, and inner brightness.
The Altered States Collection mirrors the stages of inner awakening. How did you translate these emotional states into six distinct fragrances?
Each scent began with a truth – a sentence, a moment, an insight from my own awakening.
From there, I built an energetic map with notes that embodied the feeling I wanted to evoke. It was an intuitive process with many iterations, but the result reflects the six core states:
- The Opening — curiosity
- The High — expansion
- The Light — liberation
- The Element — play
- The Flavor — pleasure
- The Vibration — unconditional self-love
Scent has a unique ability to mirror inner states; we built each fragrance to activate one of them.
Do you find people choose the scent that reflects where they are in their journey, or the one that represents where they want to go?
People often choose the scent that reflects where they are in their journey, and just as often they’re drawn to the one that represents where they want to go. Scent has a way of mirroring both our present state and our becoming.
Interestingly, the fragrance someone resists is usually the theme they most need to face; it’s the power of the subconscious choosing for them before the conscious mind even understands why.
Scent doesn’t lie; it reads energy before we do. It’s beautiful to witness and aligned with my intention of guiding people back to themselves and their intuition through our fragrances.
You collaborated with the perfumers at Flair Paris—what was that creative process like in bringing your vision to life?
Deeply intuitive and profoundly meaningful.
I brought the story, the feeling, the emotional frequency.
They translated it into notes, textures, and movement.
We built each fragrance like a piece of art, carefully, intentionally, layer by layer. It was alchemy in its purest form and the most fulfilling creative work I’ve ever done.
Why do you believe scent has such a powerful ability to shift emotional states and support self-awareness?
Because scent bypasses logic entirely.
It goes straight to the limbic system – the centre of emotion, memory, and instinct.
One inhale can:
• soften anxiety
• trigger clarity
• pull you into presence
• bring you back to yourself
When paired with names, affirmations, stories, and sensory design, fragrance becomes a transformative tool reshaping emotional patterns and anchoring you into who you’re becoming.
It’s one of the most underrated forms of self-healing.
Looking ahead, how do you hope NEH will evolve, and what new rituals or experiences are you excited to explore?
I see NEH becoming a global community – a home for people seeking beauty, clarity, and deeper connection with themselves.
We’re expanding into sound, ceremony, digital rituals, and new scent collections. I’m especially excited about innovations that make the invisible visible: NFC, multisensory spaces, virtual ceremonies.
But at its heart, The world of NEH will always be about one thing: helping people come home to themselves and remember who they are through scent, sound, ritual and intention.
Tara’s vision for NEH extends far beyond the bottle. Through scent, sound, and intention, she encourages us to slow down, tune inward, and reconnect with the parts of ourselves we often overlook. As NEH continues to evolve, its mission remains clear: to create tools that support healing, presence, and authentic self-expression. Whether through The Light or any of the fragrances in the Altered States Collection, Tara reminds us that the most meaningful rituals are the ones that bring us back to ourselves.
Poppy Watt