[6] On 5 November 1828, Hamburg granted John Sharp Douglas citizenship as number 663 of the Civil Protocol.

Douglas Sons"[10] and expanded the assortment to leather goods, travel utensils and fashion items, which they called "Fantasy Products".

[7] In 1929, the Carsten sisters passed the business on to their goddaughters Hertha and Lucie and their father, German artist Johannes Harders.

In the course of this development, Hussel AG was restructured into a holding group with two operating companies: one for confectionery and one for perfumeries.

[12] After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Douglas opened stores in eastern Germany in the 90's and expanded into Switzerland, Spain and Portugal.

Since the start of the new millennium, Douglas has expanded to Poland, Hungary, Monaco, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Denmark, Croatia and Slovenia.

In 2012, the Kreke family, together with the private equity investor Advent International, made a public takeover offer to the remaining shareholders of the listed parent company of the Douglas Group, Douglas Holding AG, which at that time also included the companies Thalia (books), Christ (jewelry), AppelrathCüpper (womensear) and Hussel (confectionary).

[18] Then, manager Isabelle Parize took over as CEO of Douglas in February 2016[19] and the headquarters was moved in October from Hagen to Düsseldorf.

[17] According to Douglas, the company wanted all customer-oriented departments and the online activities from Cologne to be concentrated in one place.

[24] In 2018, Douglas bought the majority of Parfümerie Akzente and its online shop Parfumdreams which operates in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In January 2021, the company management decided to close around 500 of the 2,400 Douglas shops in Europe and instead to expand its own global online stores, which grew by 40.6% in 2020 to €822 million in sales.

Since January 2023, Philipp Andrée has been Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and a member of the management board of the Douglas Group.

[31][32] Douglas features a diverse array of fragrances, cosmetics, skin and hair products, nutritional supplements, and accessories from more than 750 private label and premium brands.

[33] Fragrances represents the main category which accounts for over 50% of sales with brands as Armani, Chanel, Dior, Guerlain, Givenchy, Lancôme, Michael Kors and Yves Saint Laurent.

[34] In 2022 the marketplace was present in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands with 157 partners which offers around 300,000 stock keeping unit (SKUs).