Ingredients used in luxury perfumes from suppliers for Lancôme and Aerin Beauty were picked using illegal child labor, according to an investigation from BBC News. 

BBC News on May 27 released findings from its investigation into supply chains for perfume suppliers, conducted during 2023's summer picking season for jasmine flowers, a common ingredient in perfumes. Filming secretly at night in Egypt, where roughly half the world's supply of jasmine is produced, BBC journalists found at least four different locations supplying factories where a "significant number" of pickers were children younger than 15 years old. Under the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 138, ratified by Egypt in 1990, children as young as 15 may work in non-hazardous jobs, but it is illegal for anyone under the age of 15 to work in Egypt between the hours of 19:00 and 07:00.

The factories export the jasmine oil to international fragrance houses where the perfumes are created, then sold to beauty brands such as Lancôme and Aerin Beauty, which are owned by L'Oreal and Estee Lauder respectively. Although both companies have made public commitments to ethical labor practices, there is deep concern in the industry as a whole that those practices are not being followed, the BBC says.

"On paper, they are promising so many good things, like supply chain transparency and the fight against child labor," United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery Tomoya Obokata said. "Looking at (BBC's) footage, (companies) are not actually doing things that they promised to do."

The BBC said the handful of companies that own many luxury brands are squeezing budgets, resulting in very low pay. Egyptian jasmine pickers say this forces them to involve their children.

Both L'Oreal and Estee Lauder issued statements to BBC News, with the former saying that it had since performed an "on-site human rights impact assessment with a focus on child labor risks" in January of 2024. Estee Lauder said that it has contacted its suppliers "to investigate this very serious matter."