Previous studies have shown that early blind subjects (EBS) develop superior abilities in the use of their remaining senses, hypothetically due to a cross-modal reorganization of deafferented visual brain areas to process non-visual information such as sounds or tactile stimuli. However, the effects of blindness on olfactory processing are largely unknown. Here we used a battery of psychophysical tests to investigate olfactory discrimination and identification abilities in EBS and blindfolded sighted controls (BSS) matched for age, sex and handedness. To isolate the aspects related to the access to semantic information in the identification performance, three levels of cueing were used: free-identification (no-cue), semantic categorization, and multiple-choice identification. Then, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an olfactometric system, we monitored the brain activity in the same subjects while they categorized and discriminated odors and auditory stimuli (words). Results showed that EBS significantly outperformed the BSS in odor discrimination, free-identification and categorization, but not in multiple-choice identification. EBS also activated more their occipital cortex during odor and auditory (words) discrimination and categorization tasks than BSS. However, no modality-specific activation were observed in the occipital cortex of EBS. We conclude that EBS have both superior perceptual abilities and a facilitated access to the semantic information stored in memory to recognize odors. The nonspecific cross-modal recruitment of the occipital cortex in EBS during both the olfactory and auditory processing confirms a functional role played by this cortex in non-visual processing, though its exact role still remains unsettled.