Leonard Lauder, Heir to The Estée Lauder Companies, Dies at 92

Leonard Lauder, the eldest son of Estee and Joseph H. Lauder and former chief of Estee Lauder Companies, passed away Saturday at the age of 92. 

Leonard was born in New York City to a Jewish family and used to accompany his mother on sales calls and assist in product packing. He is a graduate of the Business School of Columbia University and served as a lieutenant in the US Navy during three years. He entered Estee Lauder in 1958 when he was 25 years old and the company had a limited number of employees and less than 1 million dollars in sales. 

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The Estee Lauder Companies became a worldwide empire, which encompassed Clinique, La Mer, The ordinary, MAC Cosmetics, and Bobbi Brown. He became president in 1972 and held the post till 1995 and served as chief executive between 1982 and 1999, becoming the chairman in 1995 until 2009. 

Lauder made the company go public in 1995 at a price of 26 dollars a share, and it currently has a market cap of approximately 24.3 billion dollars. According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Lauder’s net worth is 15.6 billion dollars. 

A passionate philanthropist and art collector, he pledged a 78-piece collection of cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013, the largest gift in the Met’s history. He also established a modern art research center at the Met and advocated for cancer research, serving as honorary chairman of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In 1998, he and Ronald S. Lauder founded the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.