The first synthetic organic dye discovered by William Henry Perkin in 1856 was mauveine.
Perkin found it accidentally while trying to synthesize quinine, a treatment for malaria. Oxidizing aniline with potassium dichromate produced a dark residue; when he cleaned the flask with alcohol, he noticed an intense purple solution. The dye was initially called aniline purple and later became known as mauveine or Perkin’s mauve.
The discovery mattered because earlier textile dyes came mainly from natural sources, including plants and shellfish, and purple was especially costly. Perkin patented the dye in August 1856 and opened a factory near London, helping establish the synthetic-dye industry. Mauve became a major fashion trend in Britain and France between 1859 and 1861.
A common mix-up is fuchsine, another early aniline dye discovered later. Alizarin was also important, but Perkin developed a commercial synthesis for it in 1869. Chemically, mauveine is not a single simple compound: historic samples contained several closely related molecules.