Living organisms produce low molecular weight organic natural products, called metabolites, to meet their functional needs. Primary metabolites are involved in vital biochemical pathways, while secondary or specialised metabolites mediate the interactions of living organisms with their biotic and abiotic environment. The locution "natural product" (NP) generally refers to secondary or specialised metabolites and primary metabolites, excluding macromolecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, or nucleic acids. Phytochemistry aims to chemically characterise NPs from various living organisms and to link this chemical information with biological activity profiles to address research questions mainly in chemical ecology or new active substances discovery for different economic sectors such as pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and agrochemical industries. Three major events had a considerable impact on NP research. The first, in 1992, is linked to the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity, which laid the foundations for the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use. This new regulation has been perceived as a constraint by many pharmaceutical companies and has contributed to a slowdown in research in the field. Nevertheless, an inventory of NPs introduced as drugs between 1981 and 2019 has been carried out by Newman and Cragg. Of the 1,881 molecules brought to market during these 39 years, 71 are NPs stricto sensu, 356 are derivatives of NPs, often obtained by semi-synthesis, and 272 are obtained by organic synthesis while having a pharmacophore inspired by NPs. This demonstrates, if proof was needed, that NPs are still an essential source of inspiration for Western medicine. They are also playing an increasingly important role in the cosmetics industry. The second event concerns the advent of the bioeconomy and biobased chemistry concepts, which aims to add value to biomasses, mainly agricultural, algal or forestry, without competing with food resources. Therefore, while biodiversity hotspots have historically attracted the most significant research interest, the chemical profiling of dedicated biomasses or co-products from existing industries has become an essential challenge for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 via the circular economy concept. This aspect of NP research is reinforced by recent results demonstrating unambiguously that the planetary boundary related to the introduction of new chemical entities (i.e., derived from organic synthesis) has widely been exceeded.