**1. Introduction**

Licorice (liquorice in British English, Gancao in Chinese, the leguminous plant (Fabaceae)) is a perennial plant grown in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, and China. Licorice is the root and stolon of the genus *Glycyrrhiza* plants. Licorice has a long and storied history of use in both Eastern and Western cultures for over 4000 years. Licorice extracts and its principle component, glycyrrhizin, have been used for extensive use in foods, tobacco, and cosmetics and in both traditional and herbal medicines [1–3]. As for the compo‐

© 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

nents of *Glycyrrhiza* species, about 100 kinds of triterpenoid saponins and sapogenins and about 300 kinds of phenolic compounds have been reported [4]. Since its start‐up in 1938, our company has been working on extracting and purifying the flavoring, sweetening, cosmetic and medicinal constituents from licorice. In the early days, the licorice extracts have been used in the food industry, which includes soy sauce and salted foods. Also the licorice extracts and glycyrrhizin have been used in the cosmetic industry. Recently, our company has developed new licorice products, such as antioxidative and antimicrobial products for foods from hydrophobic licorice extracts; whitening, antioxidative and antityrosinase products for cosmetics from hydrophobic licorice extracts; antiaging products for cosmetics from licorice leaves; and some‐disease suppression products for agriculture and fishery by water‐soluble licorice flavonoids. Our company is a world‐leading company to supply a high quality of licorice products and has a historical know‐how of licorice‐derived product manufacturing (**Figure 1**). This chapter presents the history of several kinds of food and cosmetic applications from many extracts and purified constituents from licorice plants in our company.

**Figure 1.** Maruzen Pharmaceuticals profile, licorice plants, and its formulated finished products.
