Leonard A. Lauder is chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. Over six decades of leadership, he helped transform the company, founded by his parents in 1946, from a brand with eight products in one country to a multi-branded and beloved global icon. Today the company is one of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of prestige skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products. The well-diversified portfolio of distinctive brands across four product categories is sold in approximately 150 countries and territories.
Mr. Lauder was born in New York City in 1933, the elder son of Estée and Joseph H. Lauder. Growing up during the Great Depression, he helped his mother, Estée Lauder, as she started the business in the family kitchen. He attended the Bronx High School of Science (’50), then graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (‘54). After serving in the U.S. Navy, in 1958 Mr. Lauder officially joined The Estée Lauder Companies, where he built the company’s first research and development laboratory and helped to grow the business.
Mr. Lauder initiated the company’s international expansion, which began in 1960 with the opening of an Estée Lauder counter at Harrods in London. An industry pioneer, he coined the phrase “Lipstick Index” (when the economy goes down, lipstick sales go up) and created the now-standard shape of lipstick after slicing the rounded lipstick top at an angle with a razor.
He was president of The Estée Lauder Companies from 1972 to 1995 and chief executive officer from 1982 to 1999. He took on the role of chairman in 1995 and served in that position through June 2009. In July 2009, Mr. Lauder became Chairman Emeritus and continues to be deeply involved in the business and day-to-day operations.
Known internally as the company’s “chief teaching officer,” Mr. Lauder believes that a company’s wealth is its people and focuses on fostering growth within the company’s diverse talent pool. A tireless advocate for employees and passionate about employee growth and creativity, he has imbued the company culture with his own personal values of kindness and respect for others.
Mr. Lauder is involved deeply in the worlds of art, education, and philanthropy.
An acclaimed art collector, Mr. Lauder is chairman emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he was a trustee from 1977 to 2011. One of its most significant benefactors, he gave a milestone gift of $131 million in 2008 to the museum’s endowment. He also helped the Whitney acquire 948 works of art, 760 of which he gifted personally; another 188 pieces were acquired with the assistance of acquisitions committees and other generous collectors. In 2016, Mr. Lauder was presented with the inaugural Whitney Collection Award as the museum announced that the Whitney’s new home in the Meatpacking District was being named the Leonard A. Lauder Building in his honor.
In 2013, Mr. Lauder pledged a transformational gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures. He has since added five major works to that promised gift and growing collection. In concert with the donation of his Cubist collection, he helped establish the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, the first such center dedicated exclusively to modern art within an encyclopedic museum, which supports fellowships, focused exhibitions, and public lectures.
Renowned for his philanthropy, Mr. Lauder is co-founder and co-chairman, with his brother, Ronald S. Lauder, of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF). He is honorary chair of the board of directors of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), founded by his late wife, Evelyn H. Lauder. He is also a major supporter of the University of Pennsylvania, Council on Foreign Relations, Aspen Institute, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Mr. Lauder’s passion for education resulted in his support for many academic institutions. He is an emeritus trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and a founding member of the board of governors of its Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, along with his brother, Ronald. He was inducted into the Bronx High School of Science Hall of Fame in 2017. When the pandemic in 2020 magnified the nation’s acute shortage of quality primary care in underserved communities, Mr. Lauder worked with the University of Pennsylvania to create a tuition-free program to educate nurse practitioners. His $125 million donation, the largest gift ever to an American nursing school, made possible the Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Lauder has been honored with a myriad of awards; among them are the “Lone Sailor” Award given by the U.S. Navy Supply Corps Foundation, the Légion d’Honneur given by the government of France, the Women’s Leadership Award given by the Lincoln Center Corporate Fund Women’s Leadership Council, and the Palazzo Strozzi Renaissance Man of the Year Award. In 2020, he was inducted into the Retail Hall of Fame by the World Retail Congress.
The Lauder family received the esteemed 2011 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in recognition of its long-standing commitment to philanthropy and public service. In 2014, Mr. Lauder was named a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Mr. Lauder and Ms. Glickman Lauder received the Gordon Parks Foundation’s Patron of the Arts Award in 2016.
Mr. Lauder shared many of the lessons he learned in business and life in his memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, published in 2020 by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Mr. Lauder was married to Evelyn H. Lauder, Senior Corporate Vice President at The Estée Lauder Companies and the Founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, from 1959 until her passing in 2011. Together, they had two sons, William (executive chairman, The Estée Lauder Companies) and Gary (managing director, Lauder Partners, LLC), five grandchildren, and one great-grandson. On January 1, 2015, Mr. Lauder married Judy Glickman Lauder, a philanthropist and internationally recognized photographer whose work is represented in more than 300 public and private collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United States Holocaust Museum. Mr. Lauder considers himself lucky in love and believes that lightning really can strike twice.