White Diamonds

By Amy DiLuna, TODAY.com senior editor

She was a movie star and a style icon, but Elizabeth Taylor’s most enduring legacy may be her perfume empire.

Twenty years after she launched White Diamonds, the scent remains the world’s best-selling celebrity fragrance.

Style blog Fashionista.com tracked down the stats from market research firm Euromonitor International, which reports that sales of White Diamonds earned $76.9 million globally in 2010. The figure takes into account all fragrances under the Elizabeth Taylor brand, which include Black Pearl and Passion. White Diamonds alone, however, brought in a whopping $61.3 million last year.

Few can forget the perfume’s TV ad (“These have always brought me luck,” purrs Taylor as she tosses a chandelier earring into a gambler’s pot). Taylor launched the fragrance at Chicago department store Marshall Field & Co. in 1991, just as she was about to embark on her eighth wedding, this time with construction worker Larry Fortensky.

White Diamonds was honored by the Fragrance Hall of Fame in 2009.