Born in Venezuela in 1939, Carolina Herrera is known as one of the most successful and desirable designers of the 20th & 21st century. Born as María Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño , Herrera was introduced to fashion at an early age when her grandmother took her to fashion shows and dressed her in outfits from Lanvin and Dior. This encouraged Herrera to have an eye for pretty women’s dresses and outfits from when she was young, and this has been one of the key factors that helped to build her lucrative empire today.

Herrera has 4 children and married twice, divorcing her first husband and remaining married to her second husband who is the special-projects editor for the women’s fashion magazine, Vanity Fair. As of 1980, Herrera designed her first clothing line after it was suggested by her close friend and Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, Diane Vreeland, in 2009 she became an official United States citizen and as of 2011, two of her daughters Carolina Jr & Patricia Lansing have participated in the creative direction and design of the growth of her illustrious company, cementing Herrera’s success for years to come.

Carolina Herrera was relatively late coming into the fashion and design scene, not launching her first clothing line until in her 40s once she had had children and settled – this however did not mean that her name was not well known on the women’s fashion circuit. She was famous as a figure of outstanding beauty, appearing on the cover of the famous women’s magazine, Vogue, no less than 7 times, she could always be found on some social scene or another and she was a constant presence on the best-dressed lists long before she became a designer. After her initial success and being spotted by a series of well known key publications for women’s fashion such as Tatler and Women’s Daily Wear, the company was set up in New York City in 1980 and remains there today. Herrera is one of the most popular designers of women’s fashion with countless tales about her creations being worn on the red carpet even still today and some of her most iconic female clients include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who asked her to design the dress for her daughter Caroline’s wedding, Duchess Diana de Melo, and actress Renée Zellweger.

In the late 1980s, the spanish fragrance company Puig licensed the Carolina Herrera brand to develop and market a line of perfumes. The brand launched its first fragrance, the well known Carolina Herrera for women, in 1988, and over the years to follow has launched a series of successful fragrances for men and women, with over 30 different fragrances in the CH, 212 and Herrera brand for women . The company expanded its offering with the CH Carolina Herrera lifestyle brand in 2008, which includes accessories and home goods in addition to fashions, as well as a new series of fragrances for men and women under the CH label.