Founder Story
Mary Ahern’s journey to creating Florent began in childhood, surrounded by communities of growers, scientists, and medical professionals. Raised on a farm near Rochester, Minnesota, by parents who were early pioneers in organic farming, she developed a deep respect for the natural world and its healing properties. Her father, a chemist, and her mother, a public health nurse practitioner, fostered in her both scientific curiosity and a holistic view of health.
Later, living in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Mary was exposed to modern agricultural methods while her mother worked closely with migrant farmworker communities. As a young adult, she spent four years in France’s Loire Valley, where she immersed herself in centuries-old rural traditions that relied on foraged plants for food and medicine. It was here that she first experienced the transformative effects of natural remedies, igniting a lifelong pursuit of understanding their efficacy.
By the late 1990s, Mary had settled in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she worked alongside midwives as a doula and began formulating her first botanical remedies. What started with a simple calendula salve grew into a disciplined practice of developing effective, plant-based formulations, rooted in both traditional methods and modern research.
Mary’s training as a painter also shaped her approach. Just as she studied the layering of pigments and oils to achieve luminosity in her artwork, she brought the same precision and sensitivity to crafting skincare—layering botanical extractions into creams, serums, and treatments to unlock their full potential.
The greatest challenge she encountered was preservation. Conventional skincare relies on synthetic preservatives to stabilize water-based products, but Mary sought a solution that aligned with her commitment to purity and performance. After years of experimentation—testing temperatures, adjusting sequences, and refining techniques—she pioneered a probiotic-based preservation system that requires no synthetic or unnatural preservatives.
In 2020, she filed a global patent application for this breakthrough method. With it, she launched Florent, a line of probiotic-preserved skincare formulations that are both stable and uncompromisingly natural.
Florent represents the culmination of Mary Ahern’s lifelong dedication to science, nature, and artistry: skincare that is rooted in integrity, proven in efficacy, and preserved by the living intelligence of probiotics.
