Jo Malone, 61, is a British perfumer and entrepreneur. Raised in Bexleyheath, southeast London, she founded Jo Malone London in 1990 before selling it to Estée Lauder Companies in 1999. Malone founded another fragrance brand, Jo Loves, in 2011. She was named among the 30 wealthiest beauty industry leaders in the inaugural Sunday Times Beauty Rich List 2025, with an estimated net worth of £15m. Malone lives in Dubai with her husband, the CEO of Jo Loves, Gary Willcox, with whom she has a grown-up son, Josh.
I travel six months of the year, but home is Dubai and it’s perfect for me. I feel blessed to live by the sea — I walk on the beach and along the old Deira creek every day. The UAE is a very sensorial place and I love the smells; where I live, in a hotel on the Jumeirah beach, there’s a spicy, warm, woody smell. In the Satwa district, where you have all the fabulous silk shops and souks, there’s always the smell of cologne, tobacco and coffee in the air.
When I’m not in Dubai I spend months at a time in different places. Last year we travelled around the Italian Riviera, exploring markets and sitting in little trattorias; we also visited Lake Como, where we stayed at the Villa D’Este hotel. We regularly visit Abu Dhabi and Oman (we love the Six Senses Zighy Bay in the latter). We go back to Greece every summer too, returning to the same rental villa in the mountains of Zakynthos.
Where I grew up, on a council estate in Bexleyheath, you just didn’t go abroad on holiday. My family didn’t have passports and we never stayed in hotels, except one time when we went to the Old Ship hotel in Brighton when my dad was working in the city. It felt like the biggest treat. When my sister and I were really tiny we’d stay in a friend’s caravan on the Isle of Sheppey, and it’s funny but I can still remember the smell of it: the minute you entered the caravan, there was this clean and cosy scent that I loved.
As we got older we’d go to Constantine Bay in Cornwall, where we’d rent a beautiful house called the Crow’s Nest, right up on a hill overlooking the sea.
I got my first passport when I got married aged 21 and my first overseas holiday was on honeymoon to Rhodes. We stayed in a little half-board hotel and I was just in love with the place. I can remember everything: the people who were sitting around the pool, the breakfast buffet… but I got such bad sunburn that I had to lie in bed covered in yoghurt for much of the trip.
I love the whole adventure of jumping on a plane. One of my first work trips was to New York — I was about 23 and doing trunk shows [where designers present their collections to potential buyers] with fashion houses. Gary and I stayed in a friend’s apartment just off Central Park and as soon as we arrived we went straight down to the park to buy hot dogs. As I was handed mine, a man was stabbed right in front of me. I was absolutely petrified and on my guard for the rest of the trip.
Around that time we didn’t have a lot of money so we’d have to find affordable places to stay. In Grasse, the town on the French Riviera that’s known for its perfume industry we stayed at a little hotel aptly named Les Parfums Hotel. It wasn’t glamorous but Grasse is where I fell in love with fragrance. I’ve been back many times, although nowadays we tend to stay in La Bastide Saint-Antoine, right in the heart of the town. It has the most beautiful garden where you can really smell the roses in May. Between visits to the perfume factories we sit and have steak frites and a carafe of rosé wine in the town square — it’s lovely.
Gary and Josh are big skiers, but I’m not. One Christmas eight years ago we were in Whistler, Canada, and I’d gone up the mountain with the boys on Christmas Day. I turned to look at a very good-looking man on his snowboard, tripped, crossed my skis and snapped all of the tendons in my leg. I was brought down in a rescue wagon, completely passed out, and spent the rest of the holiday in a wheelchair. Now I only do spa and bar when I’m in the snow.
Jo Malone’s episode of Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose is available on Spotify, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts
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