Lesley Keen's latest business venture has the golden touch, for goldmining is a pursuit embedded on both sides of her family and has inspired the name of her perfumery business, Goldminer's Daughter.
Now creating perfumes from home in Dunedin, Ms Keen has bounced back from an accident which led to a major change of direction. Growing up in Palmerston, she
helped her father prepare his gold for sale to Dunedin jeweller J. C. Gore.
John Keen was a keen goldminer, while her great-grandfather James Phillips, on her maternal side, was also a goldminer.
Ms Keen was given a gold pan for her ninth birthday and the family searched for gold in the Shag River at weekends.
But she initially forged a career in hospitality, starting in a cafe in Palmerston at the age of 13. She packed McGregors pies, destined for Australia, and made cheese rolls and percolator coffee.
In her early 20s, she sailed from Port Chalmers to Sydney with her boat-builder boyfriend and lived on the boat for five years, continuing to work in hospitality.
On her return to New Zealand, Ms Keen established a chain of three cafes, called Peppers Espresso Bar, in Auckland, having fallen in love with the ''coffee buzz''.
But her life changed when she had a serious mountain-biking accident which required her to be airlifted by Westpac rescue helicopter to Middlemore Hospital with extensive facial injuries.
Describing herself as being in a ''nullified state'' for several years, Ms Keen sold the cafes and returned home to Otago, as her father's health was failing.
She became co-owner of The Strictly Coffee Company for six years and, during that time, she explored the analytical side of coffee.
She travelled to Asia and visited coffee estates in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
It was while lying on a beach that she began pondering how to capture the scents she encountered, whether it was coffee or frangipani.
She started experimenting in her hotel room, mixing up body scrubs and, on her return home, she booked into a perfume school in Bangkok.
Her cafe career was halted after a cervical decompression procedure 10 years after her accident which left her unable to do her ''normal job''.
Continuing to pursue her interest in perfume, she travelled to Grasse, in France, to learn the history and art of distillation and the creation of perfume, and then to London, to perfume school.
Acknowledging there had been some ''seriously dark times'', Ms Keen said her perfume journey had saved her.
When she was recuperating after surgery, it was scent she used to take herself away from a painful situation.
''It's such a powerful tool, your senses,'' she said.
She reckoned her resilience could be attributed to her forebears, including her great-grandfather James Phillips and her grandfather Bill Phillips.
The book West to the Fiords, by F. W. G. Miller tells how James Phillips was taken by boat to Prices Harbour in Preservation Inlet, Fiordland, on a gold prospecting trip.
When his food began to run out, he decided to walk out.
He made a raft and put his clothes and his swag, containing his gold, matches and other possessions, on the raft, along with his dog.
He then made a flax tow-line and tied one end to the raft. Holding the other end in his hand, he plunged into the swiftly flowing river.
The towline broke about halfway across and the raft drifted out to sea while he swam the remainder of the river.
A storm later arose and he was forced to bury himself in sand. When it blew over, he had to crawl in an effort to restore his circulation.
Half-delirious, he ate shellfish found on the beach.
Eventually, he reached a hut where he found a pair of men's underpants, which he donned, and he later made it to his destination.
Bill Phillips, whose mother died in childbirth, served overseas in World War 1 and was shot in the stomach by a German sniper in 1917.
The Fortrose community in Southland later had the bullet mounted on a gold watch chain, inscribed with a message of appreciation for his war service, the book From The Southern Beat, by Michele Poole, recounts.
Ms Keen was training to be a goldsmith when she was at Strictly Coffee. That was curtailed due to her neck surgery.
Now also working as a food technology tutor at Kitchen Things, Ms Keen said her foray into perfume had been an ''amazing journey''.
She sourced materials from around the world and preferred to use mostly natural products and as much from New Zealand as possible, including lavender, Douglas fir, lemon verbena, rosemary, wild thyme and gorse flowers.
She had created a range of 10 perfumes and there were probably another 10 pending.
