Unwanted and tossed aside, Grenouille is shipped off to be raised in pitiless French orphanages and punishing workhouses. The boy enters adolescence with no capacity for sympathy or compassion. He cares about others only if they offer an interesting scent.

Grenouille's gift takes him from poverty to an apprenticeship with a master veteran perfumer (Dustin Hoffman). He then becomes a connoisseur of scent, whether pleasant (fresh apples and clean lace) or unpleasant (a rat filled with maggots). To him, every scent is a mystery, a world to explore and remember. After learning the craft of fragrance-making from the Parisian perfumer, Grenouille becomes determined to extract and bottle the whiff of others (beautiful women, for example).

But things take a left turn when he accidentally kills a girl. He is so taken with the experience - and the aroma of her body - that the rest of his life becomes an insane quest to kill young women and distill their essences into the world's most seductive perfume. Grenouille decamps to the Provence town of Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, where he becomes obsessed with the aroma of a local French beauty, the beautiful Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood), beloved daughter of a French noble (Alan Rickman).