Leonard Lauder Created the Beauty Industry as You Know It

The day before Father’s Day, Leonard Lauder, the father of the beauty industry, passed away. Leonard, 92, was the eldest son of Estée Lauder, the woman who started the now multi-billion-dollar eponymous business from their family kitchen. Leonard went on to serve as the chairman and CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies for several decades. As Linda Wells, editor of Air Mail Look and founder of Allure, wrote on Instagram, the timing of his passing was “fitting:” “He was a father figure to so many of us in the biz, me included.” In his memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, he wrote, “I remember sitting in the kitchen, watching my mother cook up facial creams on the stove.”

In carrying on his mother’s legacy, Leonard became an early champion of women and took The Estée Lauder Companies to extraordinary heights. Standing at over 6 feet tall, “Leonard was such a beautiful giant—literally and figuratively,” Gwen Flamberg, beauty director at Grazia, tells ELLE. When asked about his essential rules for business, Leonard said rule No. 1 was being accountable, but called this rule No. 2: “Never make an important decision without a woman at the table. Growing up with a mother like Estée Lauder, how could I not respect and seek out smart, tough women? Strong women have made some of the best decisions for this company.” Jamie Rosen, a contributing editor to Town & Country and founder of the Substack Office of the Surface, recalls Leonard speaking at her undergraduate business school class at Emory and wowing the students: “He was by far the most charismatic guest we had, but he also had a lot of concrete advice, much of it running counter to what I had assumed about running a successful business. It was less about being cutthroat and more about being clever. He emphasized surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, and [that included women].”

Leonard Lauder.

Leonard was an innovator, creating many “firsts” for the beauty industry. The slanted shape of today’s lipsticks was a spur-of-the-moment invention that he made after noticing that women would purse their lips during application. With a stroke of quick DIY brilliance, he took out a Gillette razor and slashed a lipstick at an angle. (Inventions even occurred to him while sleeping—he said that the idea for tinted lip gloss came to him in a dream). Leonard also coined the phrase “the lipstick index,” an economic term referring to the recession-proof nature of cosmetics that he observed from the 2001 crisis, and created the company’s first research and development laboratory.

His first wife, Evelyn, made the pink ribbon for breast cancer ubiquitous (she created it along with Alexandra Penney, an editor at SELF) and founded the Breast Cancer Research Fund. The Estée Lauder Companies made it a global mission to raise awareness for the disease, starting with distributing breast cancer research cards at counters across the nation. BCRF is now the largest private funder of breast cancer research, and deaths from the disease have declined by 44 percent since the charity was founded in 1993. “When Evelyn and I sat at their kitchen table discussing a possible foundation to connect breast cancer laboratory and clinical research, Leonard overheard and said, ‘I’m in!’” remembers BCRF founding scientific director Dr. Larry Norton. Leonard became an honorary chairman. “A really beautiful memory I have is of the memorial service for Evelyn that the family hosted at the Koch Theater. The way he spoke of her! He recalled the story of how they met and he said, ‘That was my girl... my Evelyn,’” Flamberg says.

Leonard Lauder and his first wife, Evelyn Lauder, at The Whitney Museum of American Art’s gala in 2008.

When he joined the company at 25 in 1958, it had only one brand and below $1 million dollars in sales. Known as a collector, a personality trait he developed as a young boy who first collected postcards and posters, Leonard also collected companies. Now, The Estée Lauder Companies encompasses more than 20-plus brands sold in more than 150 markets. He developed brands in-house, such as Clinique, and also bought and grew companies like Jo Malone London and Bobbi Brown.

Leonard bought Brown’s eponymous company in 1995, and their long relationship started with a phone call and a tour of his art. She tells ELLE: “He told me we were beating him at the stores and that he’d like to buy us. I told him we were not for sale. Then, he invited me to dinner at his beautiful apartment on Central Park. He was so real and normal. He instantly made me feel comfortable.” Brown later showed him the boat she named after him called TYLL, which stands for “Thank you, Leonard Lauder,” and he placed a photo of the catamaran on the mirror in his bedroom.

Leonard gave Brown business advice, including the old adage “to ask for forgiveness and not permission.” She explains: “He himself was a bit of a rule-breaker, and with that twinkle in his eye, he always encouraged me to follow my gut and do what I knew was best. He was the ultimate eye-roller and head-shaker when I called him to discuss roadblocks, and I know he had to walk a fine line and deal with both the creative and business sides. He was the most open, insightful, creative, and brilliant thinker that cared as deeply about the formula and marketing as he did about sales. He was always as excited to hear about my innovations as he was about the bottom line. He never wanted to homogenize my brand and make it like everyone else’s. He believed in the uniqueness and simplicity of who we were.”

Leonard also became so successful at distribution that he recently told Air Mail that a trick he used to fall asleep was to think of brick-and-mortar stores. “Instead of counting sheep, I mentally check off all the specialty department stores we used to sell to, starting in Portland, Maine, with Porteous, Mitchell & Braun, and working my way down the East Coast, past R. H. Stern and Filene’s in Boston, Gladding’s in Providence, G. Fox in Hartford, and so on. I’m usually asleep before I get to New York.”

Leonard enjoyed collecting art as well, always with the intention of sharing his pieces with others. “I collect to conserve and share what I’m assembling for present and future generations,” he told ArtNews. He also often hosted events at his house for the beauty industry. “My most favorite memory of Leonard is when we were invited to his and Evelyn’s home to see the famous Gustav Klimt painting ‘The Lady in Gold,’” Flamberg remembers.

Leonard Lauder speaking at the BCRF Hot Pink Party in 2012.

He donated 78 works of art to the Metropolitan Museum, now called the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, and became the Whitney Museum’s single largest benefactor. The Whitney downtown has named a building after him. “And by the time I’m dead, which I hope will be a long time from now, all my art will have been distributed to museums or my prints will have been distributed, posters posted, everything. They belong with the people not in my house, but in the house of the people, which are museums,” he said in a 2020 talk at Brandeis University.

“I think he felt that he had a duty that came with his success—a duty to protect and to share—and his philanthropy was unmatched,” says Sarah Brown, former beauty director at Vogue and founder of Sarah Brown Advisory. “The mark he and his family has had upon New York’s cultural institutions and his support of the advancement of breast cancer research, especially, has undoubtedly changed, and saved, lives.”

Leonard Lauder and Victoria Beckham.

Leonard was also known for his people-first mentality, and delighted telling people in more recent years that he was the company’s Chief Teaching Officer. “He believed that a company’s wealth is its people and focused on mentoring and fostering growth within the company’s diverse talent pool,” The Estée Lauder Companies said in a press release after his passing. He loved hand-written thank you notes, often composed on his signature robin’s-egg blue stationery. Bobbi Brown still has all hers. “I have saved every note I got on his blue stationery, and I also have a few postcards. Some were delivered in the mail, but most of them came hand-delivered in those manila folders that the couriers brought around. He was also the one who encouraged me to write post cards to hundreds of customers as I traveled the globe, meeting new people and coming up with new ideas.”

Writer Jamie Rosen remembers, “He has been referred [to] as the ‘master builder of beauty’ and he certainly was, but I believe his legacy is about people. The people he believed in early in their careers (Bobbi Brown, for one!) and the way he made others feel—a part of something bigger than themselves.”

Brown agrees. “Every time I saw him, I felt listened to and supported. We would often end the conversation with, ‘I love you.’ I know many people were touched by Leonard in the same ways and so many of us loved and admired him. But there was always enough of Leonard around for all of us.”