Dominique Ropion was born in Paris in 1955 into a family already steeped in perfumery — his mother and grandfather both worked for the historic French fragrance house Roure, and he spent time there as a teenage lab assistant before pursuing formal training. He went on to study at Roure's perfumery school in Grasse, entering the profession in the early 1980s under the guidance of established noses at the house, including Jean-Louis Sieuzac, with whom he worked closely for roughly a decade.

Ropion built his reputation across mainstream and niche perfumery alike, moving through Roure's successor companies and eventually becoming a perfumer for International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), where he was named a Master Perfumer in 2018 and remains one of the house's most senior noses. Over more than four decades he has composed for major fashion and beauty houses including Givenchy, Christian Dior, Thierry Mugler, Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, Paco Rabanne, Viktor & Rolf and Issey Miyake, alongside a long-running, close collaboration with Frédéric Malle's Editions de Parfums that began when the two met at Roure decades earlier.

His commercial output includes some of the best-known fragrances of the past forty years: Givenchy's Ysatis and Amarige, Thierry Mugler's Alien, Lancôme's La Vie Est Belle, Paco Rabanne's Invictus and Lady Million, and Viktor & Rolf's Flowerbomb. On the niche side, his work for Frédéric Malle — including Carnal Flower and Portrait of a Lady, the latter inducted into The Fragrance Foundation's Hall of Fame — is widely regarded as some of the most technically ambitious perfumery of its era, prized for pushing floral materials like tuberose and rose past naturalistic representation into something more abstract and outsized.

Ropion is frequently described by peers and critics as one of the defining noses of his generation, known for a meticulous, almost scientific working method paired with a strong affinity for grand florals. His honors include the Prix François Coty, the Cosmétique Magazine Oscar, being named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and The Fragrance Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Perfumer award in 2019.