- The very few companies that own many luxury brands, which include L’Oréal and Estée Lauder, are squeezing budgets, resulting in very low pay, forcing Egyptian jasmine pickers to involve their children often aged as young as 5.

- In their promotional material, the perfume companies and fragrance houses paint a picture of ethical sourcing practices, with every employer in the supply chain signing letters of commitment assuring safe working practices and eliminating child labour.

- “There’s a big disconnect between the preciousness that is talked about in the marketing talk, and what is actually given to the harvesters,” one insider said.

A BBC investigation into last summer’s perfume supply chains found jasmine used by Lancôme and Aerin Beauty’s suppliers was picked by minors.

All the luxury perfume brands claim to have zero tolerance on child labour.

L’Oréal, Lancôme’s owner, said it was committed to respecting human rights. Estée Lauder, Aerin Beauty’s owner, said it had contacted its suppliers.

The jasmine used in Lancôme Idôle L’Intense - and Ikat Jasmine and Limone Di Sicilia for Aerin Beauty - comes from Egypt, which produces about half the world’s supply of jasmine flowers - a key perfume ingredient.

Industry insiders told us 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.

And we have discovered the auditing systems the perfume industry uses to check on supply chains are deeply flawed.

The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, said he was disturbed by the BBC’s evidence, which includes undercover filming in Egyptian jasmine fields during last year’s picking season.

“On paper, they [the industry] are promising so many good things, like supply chain transparency and the fight against child labour. Looking at this footage, they are not actually doing things that they promised to do.”

Heba - who lives in a village in the district of Gharbia, the heart of Egypt’s jasmine region - wakes her family at 03:00 to begin picking the flowers before the sun’s heat damages them.

Heba says she needs her four children - aged from 5 to 15 - to help. Like most jasmine pickers in Egypt, she is what is known as an “independent picker” and works on a smallholder farm. The more she and her children can pick, the more they earn.

On the night we filmed her, she and her children managed to pick 1.5kg of jasmine flowers. After paying a third of her earnings to the land owner, she was left with roughly US$1.5 [£1.18] for that night’s work. This is worth less than ever before, given inflation in Egypt is at an all-time high, and pickers are often living below the poverty line.

Heba’s 10-year-old daughter Basmalla has also been diagnosed with a severe eye allergy. At a medical consultation we attended with her, the doctor told her that her vision will be affected if she continues jasmine picking without treating the inflammation.

Once the jasmine has been picked and weighed, it is transferred via collection points to one of several local factories which extract oil from the flowers - the main three being A Fakhry and Co, Hashem Brothers and Machalico. Each year, it is the factories that set the price for the jasmine picked by people like Heba.

It is difficult to say exactly how many of the 30,000 people involved in Egypt’s jasmine industry are children. But during the summer of 2023 the BBC filmed across this region and spoke to many residents who told us the low price for jasmine meant they needed to include their children in their work.

We witnessed that, at four different locations, a significant number of pickers working on smallholder farms - which supply the main factories - were children under the age of 15. Multiple sources also told us that there were children working on farms directly owned by the Machalico factory, so we went undercover to film there and found pickers who told us their ages ranged from 12 to 14.

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. Givaudan, based in Switzerland is one of the largest, and has a longstanding relationship with A Fakhry and Co.

But it is the perfume companies above them - which include L’Oréal and Estée Lauder - which hold all the power, according to independent perfumer Christophe Laudamiel and several other industry insiders.

Known as “the masters”, they set the brief and a very tight budget for the fragrance houses, he said.

“The masters’ interest is to have the cheapest oil possible to put in the fragrance bottle,” and then to sell it at the highest possible price, said Mr Laudamiel, who spent years working inside one of the fragrance houses.

“They actually don’t govern the salary or the wages of the harvesters, nor the actual price of jasmine, because they are beyond that,” he explained.

But he said that because of the budget that they set, the pressure on wages “trickles down” - to the factories, and ultimately, the pickers.

“There’s a big disconnect between the preciousness that is talked about in the marketing talk, and what is actually given to the harvesters,” he added.

In their promotional material, the perfume companies and fragrance houses paint a picture of ethical sourcing practices. Every employer in the supply chain has also signed a letter of commitment to the UN, pledging to abide by its guidelines regarding safe working practices and eliminating child labour.

The issue, according to a senior executive with fragrance house Givaudan, is the lack of oversight the perfume companies have of their supply chains.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive said these companies relied on the fragrance houses to instruct third-party auditing companies to check for due diligence.