Nuxe The Exceptional Day & Night Cream 75ml, Merveillance Lift Review

Four billion active cells in a single drop, the page says, and the number is probably true: a Chlorella vulgaris cell is a few micrometres across, and billions of them weigh almost nothing. That is the trick of counting cells instead of grams. On the label the extract sits twenty-third, after the benzyl alcohol preservative and two places before the rosemary leaf extract that is there to keep the sunflower oil fresh. The microalga is the story of the Merveillance Lift range — a freshwater green cell that has survived 2.5 billion years behind an impenetrable membrane, as Nuxe tells it — and the story is charming. It is not, in this jar, the ingredient doing the work. Two others are, and they are worth getting to quickly.

The first is squalane, second in the list ahead of the glycerin, and the second is niacinamide at seventh — ahead of the fragrance, the shea butter and every botanical — added, in the brand's phrase, as an 'expert active'. Between them sits alcohol denat at fifth, and the three together explain the cream completely. The alcohol carries the emulsion and flashes off; the squalane slips and stays; a polyacrylate crosspolymer at tenth sets the whole thing to a velvety, matte, powder-soft finish in under a minute. Shea at eleventh, a light triglyceride at seventeenth and sunflower oil at eighteenth put back a modest occlusive-and-linoleic layer. The result wears like a gel-cream from a jar that looks like it holds something richer, and it is, honestly, a pleasure on combination skin at eight in the morning: no film, no wait, foundation straight on. 'Skin is smoothed for 90 percent from the first day' is exactly what a squalane-and-crosspolymer set does to the surface, and the brand's 31 volunteers were describing it accurately.

The niacinamide is what lifts this above a nice texture. Vitamin B3 is the rare cosmetic ingredient with controlled human evidence for the claims on the page — evenness, radiance, fine lines — from a twelve-week split-face trial of 5 percent against vehicle that measured reductions in hyperpigmented spots, blotchiness and sallowness and an improvement in elasticity. Nuxe does not print its dose, which is the transparency gap in an otherwise carefully footnoted product, and seventh position in a light base suggests low single digits. Even so, this is a cream where 'more even for 97 percent at 28 days' has a mechanism behind it rather than a bracket — with the caveat that the clinical timeline is eight to twelve weeks, and that 'firmer for 90 percent at seven days' is the feel of a hydrated, alcohol-tightened surface, not a change in the dermis.

Merveillance Lift is the mid-tier range, and this 'exceptional' 75 ml day-and-night edition arrived on the US site in September 2025, seven months after Nuxuriance Ultra got the same treatment at $109. The two are easy to confuse and are not the same product. The Nuxuriance cream is a shea-jojoba-squalane emollient with niacinamide eighth and the Alfa [3R] trio; this one is lighter, alcohol-carried, Chlorella-branded, and $23 cheaper for the same 75 ml — about $1.15 a millilitre, the best unit price in Nuxe's prestige tier. For normal and combination skin choosing between the two, the cheaper jar is the more comfortable wear. For dry skin it is the wrong jar, because the alcohol takes more than the shea gives back by the second night.

And for reactive skin it is the wrong range altogether. Parfum sits ninth — higher than in any Nuxuriance cream — with Citrus aurantium peel oil at thirty-first and nine declared allergen components closing the list: linalool, linalyl acetate, alpha-isomethyl ionone, geraniol, citronellol, limonene, terpineol, a musk and benzyl alcohol, which doubles as a preservative. The scent is brighter and greener than the range's usual rose-musk — bitter orange and a lavender-like sweetness over violet — and it is applied twice a day over a layer of alcohol. That is the most sensitising combination in this batch of Nuxe creams, on a jar labelled suitable for all skin types, and the niacinamide inside it — the ingredient a rosacea-prone face would actually benefit from — cannot rescue the vehicle it arrives in. The bitter-orange oil is one more reason the morning sunscreen is not optional.

Eighty-six dollars for 75 ml buys a fast, velvety, makeup-friendly day-and-night cream with one evidenced active at an undisclosed dose, a light-but-real lipid layer, vegan and French-made sourcing, a green frosted jar and a loud, pretty fragrance. The Chlorella is a name on the carton. Combination skin that wants a prestige French cream it can wear under sunscreen without thinking about it will be well served, and at the best unit price the house offers. Dry skin should take the Nuxuriance version, reactive skin should take an unscented niacinamide cream from anywhere, and everyone should count the cells for what they are: very small, very numerous, and twenty-third.