Leonard Lauder , the eldest son of beauty pioneer Estée Lauder who grew up typing invoices for the family business he would later transform into a global empire, died Saturday at the age of 92, the company said.
In five decades at Estée Lauder , including a 17-year tenure as chief executive, Lauder secured prime spots in every major U.S. department store and built a portfolio of beauty’s biggest names, including Bobbi Brown, Aveda and MAC.
A dealmaker, he grew the company through acquisitions and took Estée Lauder public in 1995 on the New York Stock Exchange. Today, the company has more than two dozen brands and roughly $15 billion in annual sales. The Lauder family is still the biggest shareholder and controls more than 80% of the voting power.
FILE PHOTO: Leonard Lauder arrives for the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Gala in New York City, NY, U.S. November 5, 2018. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs/File Photo
A famed art collector and philanthropist, Lauder long held a place in the upper echelons of New York society, his family’s name gracing portions of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, among other institutions.
“My son always thought big,” his mother, Estée, said in her 1985 biography. She had started the business in 1946 selling skin creams she made in her Queens, N.Y., kitchen. “He worked every summer, every free moment.”
Lauder, generally seen in fastidiously coordinated suits, combined a hard-driving, workaholic style with charm and wit. He joined the family business in 1958; at the time it was closely held and generating less than $1 million in sales. He was CEO until 1999 and stepped down as chairman in 2009, but stayed involved as chairman emeritus.
Under Lauder, Estée Lauder expanded into Europe and Asia and became a department-store staple at a time when big retailers controlled the high-end beauty business. He created the company’s first research-and-development laboratory and ushered in the first nonfamily-member CEO.
The billionaire coined the idea of a Lipstick Index nearly two decades ago to show how lipstick sales rise in a bad economy. The theory behind it is that women will buy high-end cosmetics in a recession because they are an affordable luxury relative to bigger-ticket items such as jewelry or clothes.
Lauder, at an event in 2014, described working for his mother, who retired in 1995 and died in 2004. She would introduce him as her son first, then note he also was the company president and command, “Comb your hair.”
He stood apart from his younger brother, Ronald, who spent two decades at the company but left for other ventures, which included a U.S. ambassadorship to Austria and an unsuccessful bid for New York City mayor in 1989.
One of Lauder’s sons, William, sits on the board and served as CEO for five years until 2009, stepping down amid turmoil at the company. In 2023, Lauder nominated another son, Gary, to take his seat on the company’s board.
Leonard Lauder was well-known as a collector in the art world. In 2013, he donated a renowned collection of 78 cubist artworks, including pieces by Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris, valued at $1 billion, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Leonard Lauder is pictured at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in this March 1998 photo. Lauder, the chief executive of Estee Lauder, has been the chairman of the Whitney for the last 14 years. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Scholars visited Lauder’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to study his collection, which comprised pieces, Lauder told The Wall Street Journal in 2013, that “sing to me.”
His first collection, started as a boy, was of postcards. He eventually amassed more than 120,000, which he promised to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Leonard Alan Lauder was born on March 19, 1933, in New York to Estée and Joseph Lauder. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy for three years at the height of the Cold War, followed by another four years in the Navy Reserve.
“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 U.S. Naval Institute newsletter. “Yet, for me, they were defining.”
Lauder later graduated from Columbia University’s School of Business and, at 25, joined his family’s company.
Lauder was married to Evelyn Hausner from 1959 until her death in 2011. In 2013, he called off his high-profile engagement to Linda Johnson , then chief executive of the Brooklyn Public Library. Two years later he wed Judy Ellis-Glickman, the widow of a close friend whom he’d known more than 30 years.
Lauder is survived by his sons William and Gary, and his wife.
Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications undefined When Leonard Lauder joined the family business in 1958, it was generating less than $1 million in sales. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was generating less than $1 billion. (Corrected on June 15)
