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Leonard Lauder, who for 17 years ran beauty behemoth Estée Lauder after his mother’s death, has died aged 92.
The American businessman was the eldest son of Estée Lauder, after whom the cosmetics brand she founded is named, and her husband Joseph.
Lauder, along with his much-younger brother Ronald, 81, inherited control of the company from their parents.
He was most recently estimated to be worth $32.3 billion, as of September 2021, making him at the time the 44th richest person in the world.
Lauder died on Saturday, the company said without specifying a cause of death.
Estée Lauder, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants to New York City, started the eponymous brand in 1946 and steadily built it over coming decades.
Leonard Lauder, Elizabeth Hurley, Sir Elton John and Shane Warne attend the Breast Cancer Foundation’s Hot Pink Party at Waldorf Astoria Hotel on April 30, 2012 in New York City
Lauder started at the company in 1958 when he was 25, after three years as a US Navy officer and graduating from Columbia University’s School of Business.
‘With brave American troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq, my years of military service seem comparatively uneventful,’ he wrote in 2010 in a US Naval Institute newsletter.
‘Yet, for me, they were defining.’
Lauder eventually served as its chief executive of the company from 1982 to 1999 and chairman until 2009.
His mother always reminded him, ‘Comb your hair’, and introduced him first as her son, and only then noted his lofty position in the company.
The company grew from a family firm to a global giant under his leadership through a series of big acquisitions like MAC, Bobbi Brown and Aveda in 1980s and ’90s.
He also started the company’s research and development labs and expanded its presence to Europe, Asia, and beyond.
Estée Lauder now has two dozen brands and $15 billion a year in sales. The company is public, but the Lauder family has 86 per cent of voting rights and owns 38 per cent of shares.
Lauder’s son William was chief executive in 2004 to 2009, and his younger son Gary replaced him on the board in 2023.
Lauder was also a patron of the arts and donated enough to have the family name on wings of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
He also donated 78 cubist artworks by masters including Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris, valued at $1 billion, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013.
More to come.
Leonard Lauder, who for 17 years ran beauty behemoth Estée Lauder after his mother’s death, has died aged 92
