LEONARD LAUDER DIES AT 92: ESTÉE LAUDER VISIONARY WHO COINED THE LIPSTICK INDEX
15 June 2025
— New York City
Leonard A.
Lauder, chairman-emeritus and longtime chief executive of The Estée Lauder
Companies, died on 14 June, aged 92, surrounded by family, the company
confirmed on Sunday. The beauty-industry titan joined the family firm in 1958
and spent nearly six decades turning a single-counter cosmetics business into a
global powerhouse.
From family
counter to global beauty empire
Lauder
steered the company through its formative leaps: launching Aramis in 1964,
inaugurating Clinique in 1968 and taking the group public in 1995, a move that
funded a string of acquisitions—M·A·C, Bobbi Brown, Aveda and others—that
pushed annual sales above US $15 billion. He also introduced formal R&D,
appointed the first non-family CEO and popularised the “Lipstick Index,”
arguing that sales of affordable luxuries rise when economies falter—an idea
still referenced by economists two decades on.
Today the beauty and personal-care market
is valued at roughly US $593 billion after growing 6.7 % in 2024, according to
Euromonitor International—growth analysts say would have been harder without
Lauder’s early emphasis on global brand-building and prestige positioning.
Legacy beyond cosmetics: philanthropy and cultural
influence
A noted art
patron, Lauder pledged a US $1 billion Cubist collection to New York’s
Metropolitan Museum in 2013 and helped found the Whitney Museum’s new downtown
home. He and his late wife, Evelyn, channelled hundreds of millions into the
Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery
Foundation—causes his son William called “as central to him as any product
launch.” Industry observers credit Lauder with professionalising beauty
marketing: “His focus on data-driven forecasting and brand storytelling set the
template every prestige house follows,” notes Kayla Villena, senior analyst at
Euromonitor. The firm’s 2025 outlook singles out social-commerce-fuelled
growth—a channel Lauder predicted in early digital pilots two decades ago. Lauder
is survived by his wife, Judy Glickman Lauder; sons William P. Lauder and Gary
M. Lauder; brother Ronald S. Lauder; and an extended family now at the helm of
a company operating in 150-plus countries. Private services will be held this
week in New York; the family requests donations to the Breast Cancer Research
Foundation or Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation in lieu of flowers