Codeigniter email do not encode to utf8
you have to encode strings to UTF-8, even if you expect they are already utf-8 encoded. Try php mb-convert-encoding
mb_convert_encoding($content, "UTF-8");
Check that the file format is UTF-8 too. Sometimes, when using Eclipse, it sets by default to ISO-8859.
Right click on the file > Porperties > Text file encoding: UTF8.
You can apply this to all the project (WARNING: it may break up some characters)