M BY MARIAH CAREY In a first for Arden, Carey's fragrance will be launched globally nearly simultaneously, said Ron Rolleston, executive vice president of Arden. It will be released in about 2,000 U.S. department and specialty store doors, including Macy's, Belk and Dillard's in September, followed closely by door openings in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K., Scandinavia and Spain - for a total of 15,000 doors worldwide.

And if Carey's musical prowess extends to her fragrance, Arden will have a hit on its hands. While none of the executives would discuss sales projections or advertising and promotional spending, industry sources estimated that the scent could do $75 million at retail globally in its first year, with as much as $45 million of that figure to come from the U.S. market. Advertising and promotional spending is estimated at $20 million.

Carey's passion will prove to be a key success point for the fragrance, E. Scott Beattie, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Arden, believes. "If the celebrity is passionate about doing it, if they like the project, they like working on it, [it will do well]," he said. "[Mariah's] loved working on it. She's spent hours, endless hours, designing the bottle and testing the fragrance."

While none of the executives would comment, Carey is said to be reaping a royalty of 5 to 6 percent, with a guaranteed payday of $10 million over the next three years.

"We have long-range plans with Mariah," added Rolleston. "It's our attitude that this is the first of what we think is an opportunity to do a couple of different interesting things with her. What's great is that Mariah has a very broad audience, from 18 to 45, with a median age of 32. What we will make sure that we do in our media mix is target her audience with vehicles which work for them. That doesn't necessarily mean we will follow the same marketing mix that we would with, say, Hilary Duff or Britney Spears. We focus on each of them individually."

While new media has been somewhat the order of the day for Arden's latest celebrity launches, M will have a more traditional media mix, said Rolleston, with national print advertising in fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines slated to begin in September books. "That works for her audience," he said. The ad was created by advertising guru David Lipman in St. Barth's, said Rolleston. A TV campaign will run at holiday time and on cable TV, he added.

Carey isn't planning to stop with fragrance either: She is also in early stages of developing a lingerie line, and has a self-branded costume jewelry line with Claire's. She's also got an eye on the hair, color cosmetics and skin care categories. "We've been talking about a few different ideas," said Carey. "Anything that's creative. In the beauty world, skin, makeup - I will sit there and do people's hair and makeup. The minute someone gets a new haircut, I'm focused on it. I'm focused on the scent of the skin and I really take care of it. And I'm really excited because I love lingerie, and I've been looking at doing something with that - but that's a whole different story," she said with a smile.