L'Occitane, the French cosmetics and toiletries retailer, is planning a flotation and share offer in Hong Kong to raise $300 million (£151 million) and exploit the company's success in Asian markets.

The Provence-based company may have made a fortune selling soaps and fragrances that project a quintessentially French idyll of scented lavender, almond blossom and olive groves, but its banking advisers said that L'Occitane was looking to China for its stock market launch rather than France. According to one banking source, the company hoped to benefit from its rapid expansion in Asian markets. L'Occitane wants to expand in China, where it has 35 shops, while Japan is the company's second-largest market after the United States and ahead of France, which is merely in third place.

The decision to spurn a French listing might also reflect the more sombre mood on the Paris bourse, where the CAC-40 index of leading shares has tumbled by a third since the beginning of the year. Over the same period, the Hang Seng index has lost only 3 per cent of its value.

L'Occitane - the name refers to Occitania, the southern part of France that in the Middle Ages spoke la langue d'Oc - is the creation of Olivier Baussan, an entrepreneur who in 1976 began making rosemary oil in an ancient copper still to sell in local markets in Haute Provence.

Similar to Anita Roddick, the late founder of the Body Shop, who was inventing her business in the family kitchen in Hove during the same period, Mr Baussan had a passion for natural ingredients as well as a romantic vision.

At the company's headquarters, still located at Manosque, in Haute-Provence, there is a perfume school for the blind and the packaging for L'Occitane's soaps includes Braille labelling.

Similarities between the Body Shop and L'Occitane end there, however, because the latter still resists the embrace of a multinational that has watched the growth of the brand with a covetous gaze. Before its successful seduction of the Body Shop in 2006, L'Oréal is said to have approached its compatriot hoping to strike a deal.

For the French cosmetics colossus, L'Occitane might have offered more obvious attractions - not least the latter's pedigree and Gallic culture, which both companies have used to enormous advantage in their retailing ventures in North America and the Far East. Moreover, cosmetics experts point out that L'Occitane is a more expensive, upmarket brand, an easier fit for the glamorous world of L'Oréal. One of the smaller company's leading products is a hand cream made from shea butter, a fat extracted from shea trees in Burkina Faso and which L'Occitane sells at $25 (£12.60) for a 200ml tub in its shops in Britain.

L'Occitane has had its ups and downs. The founder lost control of the business to venture capitalists in the 1980s, but Mr Baussan was brought back into the fold to lead the creative thrust of the company in the 1990s by Reinold Geiger, the Austrian chief executive who bought out the money men in 1994 and who remains the biggest shareholder. Last year half of the interest of another outside investor, the cosmetics company Clarins, was bought out, giving L'Occitane's management 80 per cent of the stock.

Clarins did well with its investment, generating a gain of €150 million (£120 million) and the restructuring is said to have valued L'Occitane at €800 million.

Since 2000, revenues at L'Occitane have risen from €55 million to more than €400 million and 86 per cent of that turnover is generated outside France.

Taking shape

$300m The size of Hong Kong share offer

35 L’Occitane shops so far in China

80% Stock in company held by managers

1994 The year Reinold Geiger got control

Source: Times Archive

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