How The Scents of Hové Parfumeur Traveled Across The World

Amy Wendel cannot bottle her passion for perfume.

Lillian Hovey-King, the daughter of a cavalry officer, spent much of her life traveling around the world and perfecting the craft of making perfume — a skill she learned from her Creole-French mother. When the market crashed in 1929, her hobby quickly became the family’s livelihood.

Hové Parfumeur blossomed on the bottom floor of a home on New Orleans’ Royal Street. Each generation ran the business from homes in the French Quarter on Toulouse and Royal Street and then to the Dejan House on Chartres Street, the current location.

In keeping with its heritage, the seductive scents of Hové Parfumeur in Destin’s HarborWalk Village immediately transport visitors back to the romantic days of its origin in New Orleans. The elegant shop is graced with mirrors and vintage finds where beautiful glass bottles rest. You can dress up your fragrance with Hové’s feminine designer-label fashions.

Today, great-niece Amy Wendel helps women find their favorite Hové fragrances out of a line of 53. And after all these years, the shopkeeper is more passionate than ever.

“I love scents and everything about them,” she says. If you want to try one of the shop’s oldest and most popular, that would be Tea Olive. “It’s an incredible, indigenous Southern floral named for one of the oldest trees in New Orleans,” Wendel says. “And it’s just as lovely.”