“Love Island USA” season six star Leah Kateb, best known by fans of the show as the “people’s princess,” is taking her talents behind the scenes at Skylar, the clean fragrance company founded in 2017, as its new chief creative officer and official re-founder. “I’m not an ambassador; I’m not an influencer for the brand. This is mine now. This is my baby,” Kateb, 25, told WWD.

Under her creative direction, Skylar is set to launch a series of fresh fragrances in the coming months, as well as host several in-person activations to unite consumers with the new scents. “Something that’s really important to me is connecting with my supporters outside of the phone. We have a lot of things coming up that go outside of just posting an Instagram picture. I really want this to feel like a community,” Kateb said. “ I don’t want it to just feel like an ad because to me it’s not an ad. It really is something very important, and I want people to feel like it’s ours.”

Kateb’s path to perfumer started the moment she put her life on pause for reality TV last summer. The casting directors for “Love Island USA” reached out to her while she was working as a quality control analyst for a company working with medical devices.

Indeed, Kateb wound up joining the storied season six cast of “Love Island USA” as one of the original islanders who came in on night one. In six weeks of filming, her witty one-liners and candid impressions went viral, which lent a hand in the season’s overall success as the most-watched reality show with more than 919.1 million minutes watched in just one week last year. She came off the show as a runner-up, alongside her now boyfriend, Miguel Harichi, and was greeted with over 3.6 million followers, up 3.55 million from when she entered. “I still cry to this day. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Kateb said of the tremendous support she’s received online.

In the months since the season finale, Kateb’s posted a wide variety of content on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, from vegan restaurant reviews to “get ready with me” videos. Her influence has been ineffable; just one video of her shower routine caused the Eos Vanilla Cashmere 24-Hour Moisture Body Lotion to sell out completely. She’s been tapped by major brands and retailers, such as Skims, Amazon and Google, for partnerships, too. Yet, her dream of starting her own perfume collection has always remained a priority.

“ Something that I was really, really interested in, and one of the first things I mentioned when I had a meeting with a bunch of (talent) agencies, was that I wanted my own perfume line,” she explained.

The opportunity to work with Skylar was meant to be. Kateb discovered the brand when she was searching for a vanilla scent at Sephora years ago. She still extols that same Vanilla Sky perfume to her millions of followers today, which is what ultimately caught Skylar’s attention. “ I made a perfume video and I was saying, ‘What are my top perfumes?’ And Skylar saw that, and then lo and behold, they reached out to United Talent Agency and our stars aligned,” Kateb noted.

“ I really loved everything about the brand. I thought it was really interesting that it was clean beauty. Up until recently, I didn’t know I had eczema, and so I would always keep trying perfumes and it would give me crazy rashes where I would break out in the hives. Skylar was probably one of the only perfumes that didn’t irritate me,” Kateb said.

Now, she’s “getting her hands dirty,” contributing far more than just advertisements. “I tell the team to involve me in absolutely everything. We have this groupchat, and I’m constantly texting in it. I’m writing up the recipes. I have so many scents that I’ve created that I’m so excited about,” she noted.

Kateb’s appointment comes amid Skylar’s total reinvention. David Dreyer, chief marketing officer of Starco Brands, Skylar’s parent company, told WWD that Kateb has been essential in the brand’s makeover. “We initially approached Leah as she was very public about her love for our fragrances. As we started talking further, we just fell in love. She had such a strong command of the category and vision for Skylar, that making her our chief creative officer was a no-brainer,” he said.

Dreyer continued: “Leah is helping us reimagine Skylar from the ground up: bringing us back to our California roots, creating new scents, redefining our vibe and shaping the future of fragrance.”

The fragrance brand was originally founded by Cat Chen as a cruelty-free, hypoallergenic scent solution. Four years after its creation, Skylar aimed to beat its perfume mecca competitors through innovation. It unveiled a new logo, stronger formula concentrates and sustainable packaging, graduating from eau de toilette to eau de parfum. In April, the brand capitalized on the burgeoning fragrance mist boom with the release of its inaugural SPF/fragrance hybrid called Boardwalk Delight Scent-Screen Mist.

As of now, the details of Skylar’s new scents and their release dates are being kept under wraps. “There’s just so much in the works. Unfortunately, nothing we can leak yet, but it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Kateb cheekily added. That said, the possibility of a Persian love cake-inspired scent is high as Kateb likened herself to such.