English text by Irene Luo
Photography by Banny Zhang
Descending from a line of traditional Chinese medicine doctors, Moreen Liao grew up in Taiwan surrounded by medicinal herbs and fragrant flowers in her family’s garden. Moreen’s mother used herbs and flowers for every imaginable purpose: from cooking nutrient-rich cuisine to concocting medicine to brewing wine, like osmanthus and rose wines with special revitalizing properties. She aged some wines for as long as 20 or 30 years.
Immersed as she was in the scents of different flowers and herbs, Moreen acquired a keen sense of smell. “It’s to the point that sometimes, when I smell a scent, I will recall meeting someone over 10 years ago, or a certain garden where I smelled this scent, or someone who used a perfume with this particular fragrance,” Moreen said.
After moving out of her parents’ home for boarding school, she would buy a bundle of flowers every weekend to brighten her room. Her favorite flower is the dainty white ginger lily, found in Taiwan and other parts of Asia. This weekly routine inspired her love for aromatherapy, which uses extracts from plants, called essential oils, to ease stress and anxiety and uplift one’s mood.
She imbues her Australia-based beauty brand, Ausganica, with a similar philosophy: to fill one’s life with nature’s beauty, aromas, and nourishing properties. Every ingredient in Ausganica’s products is all-natural and plant-based, so no harmful chemicals enter your body. The company uses over 300 certified organic ingredients, including over 250 active botanicals carefully extracted from the roots, flowers, fruits, or leaves of different plants around the world.
Moreen’s personal favorite product is Rose Elixir, which is infused with 108 organic botanicals to nourish and revitalize the skin, making it more radiant, toned, and supple. “It’s like a superfood for skin,” Moreen says. And it also helps the skin resist environmental stressors like pollution, free radicals, oxidization, and UV rays.
A key component of Rose Elixir is hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid holds water, making the skin hydrated and plump. It is actually found naturally in the skin, but as humans age, our skin has less and less of it, which is why it features prominently in many skin care products. The hyaluronic acid used in Ausganica products is fermented from beetroot and wheat and has extremely small molecules, thus allowing it to penetrate the skin more effectively. This natural form of hyaluronic acid can cost over a thousand times more than the synthetic form.
In the formulations at Ausganica, Moreen unites the efficacy of Western herbs with the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine. She draws from the Chinese concept of Five Elements (namely, water, wood, metal, fire, earth), wherein each element corresponds in Chinese medicine to one of the five major organs (kidney, liver, lung, heart, and spleen, respectively). In contrast to Western medicine, which views the body as a collection of individual parts, traditional Chinese medicine sees the human body as a set of interconnected systems that maintain health by balancing opposing energies and the natural flow of the body’s vital energy. Thus, traditional Chinese medicine adopts a holistic approach that emphasizes preventing illnesses before they manifest.
As such, Moreen is a strong advocate for meditation to promote health and wellness. “A lot of times, when I’m really tired, the best rest is meditation,” she says. Moreen practices a traditional Chinese meditation discipline called Falun Dafa, which unites five physical exercises with a moral philosophy based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In this day and age, people are increasingly bustling about, bombarded by appointments and commitments and stress-inducing circumstances. Falun Dafa, Moreen says, “helps me calm down when my mind is turbulent and helps me let go of negative emotions.”
Moreen hopes Ausganica’s personal care products can also uplift people in their pursuit of inner peace, beauty, and confidence. With its bounty of organic ingredients, Ausganica offers delightful doses of nature to revitalize and refresh our lives.
