The Biography of Leonard Lauder - Net worth, Estee Lauder

Leonard Lauder is chairman of the Estee Lauder Companies; a family business he has successfully run for three decades. He first joined the company in 1958 where he worked with his mother, the founder of Estee Lauder. Under Leonard’s leadership, the company’s first R&D laboratory was created, and brands like Bobbi Brown, MAC, and Aveda were acquired in the mid-1990s. The company now operates other brands such as Clinique, La Mer, Smashbox, and of course Estee Lauder. He served as the CEO of the company until 1999 but maintains his position as chairman emeritus of the company. He is also popularly known as “Chief Teaching Officer” around the company. He ranks No.66 on the Forbes 2020 World's Billionaires list.

Net worth

$17.5 as of May 27, 2020

Interesting Facts

●    Together with his brother, Ronald, the pair co-chair the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation

●    He has a large collection of postcards and has gifted out hundreds of thousands of them to different museums.

Source of Wealth

●    Estee Lauder

Early life, education, and career

Leonard Alan Lauder was born on March 19, 1933, to Estee and Joseph Lauder. He is the first-born son and elder brother to Ronald Lauder. In their childhood years, Leonard and Ronald would fill jars, type invoices, deliver packages, and answer phone calls at the Estee Lauder store. They became unofficially part of the company until their adulthood—Leonard first in 1958 and Ronald later in the mid-1960s.

Leonard Lauder attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and furthered his studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. On graduation, he joined the U.S. Navy where he served as a lieutenant until he later joined his mother at Estee Lauder in 1958. In the same year, the company recorded its first $1 million in sales. It later moved to its new Manhattan office and production facility in Long Island.

The Estee Lauder Companies Inc.

The Estee Lauder Companies was founded in 1946 by Estee and Joseph Lauder (Leonard Lauder’s parents). It is a publicly-traded company, and a New York-based manufacturer and marketer of makeup, skincare, haircare, and fragrance products. The company is popularly known for its diverse prestigious brands including top brands like MAC. It has an international market base and reaches its consumers through retail and e-commerce channels. Estee Lauder officially went public on the New York Stock Exchange on November 16, 1995, for $3 billion selling at $26.00 per share—almost 50 years after its founding. Today, its price has risen to $217 per share

When the company started in 1946, it focused on the production of skincare products having a total of four branded products: Super rich all-purpose crème, crème pack, skin lotion, and cleansing oil. By 1948, the company opened its first department store account in Manhattan. From its inception until 1960, the company expanded its product range from four. It also opened its first international department store account in 1960, located in London, and by the following year, it opened an outlet in Hong Kong.

In 1964, a new product line called Aramis was introduced in the company. The product served as a brand for men’s grooming and fragrance products, and by 1976 another line was created for men’s product, called Skin Supplies for Men, making Estee Lauder the first women cosmetic company to create room for men care products. The company isn’t only known for producing exquisite skincare products, but also known for clinically testing its products before market distribution. In 1968 the company created Clinique, an allergy-tested and fragrance-free cosmetic, and dermatologist-approved brand.

After recording many successes and expansions, under the new leadership and management of Leonard Lauder, the company took a new turn with the acquisition of MAC cosmetics in 1994/98; Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and La Mer in 1995, and Aveda, a hair care and beauty brand in 1997. The company also acquired Jo Malone London, a well-known fragrance house in 1999.

Today, Estee Lauder Companies Inc. owns over 30 big brands and reported $18.8 billion in Net Sales for 2019. According to Brand New, the company was already generating annual revenues of $500,000 in its early years of operation. And eventually increased to $800,000 in annual sales in 1958.

Leonard Lauder’s Contribution to Estee Lauder Inc.

Lauder consistently increased the company’s sales and profits by continually developing and implementing innovative sales and marketing programs that significantly contributed to the growth of the company. Alongside making other brand acquisitions and incorporating them into the Estee Lauder, he also created the company’s first product development laboratory with the involvement of professional specialists. A strategic part of Estee Lauder’s expansion and growth is owed to Leonard, as he took the company international by opening its first international account at Harrods in London. 

During his time at Estee Lauder, he served as the president of the company from 1972 to 1995 and doubled as CEO from 1982 to 1999. On leaving his position as CEO, he assumed the position as chairman from 1995 till 2009. Now he holds the position of chairman emeritus.

Other Interests

Like most of his luxury product counterparts, Lauder is an art lover and major collector. When he was only six years old, he collected his first art, Art Deco Postcards. In 1971, he became a member of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s acquisitions board, and by 1977 became a Whitney trustee. He has made prolific contributions and donations to the Museum. He made history in 2008 by donating $131 million to the museum; thereby, making it the largest museum donation in all time. He has since become a long-time major benefactor of the Whitney Museum.

 In an interview with The New Yorker, Lauder recalls how collecting postcards turned him into a full-time art collector and he has since, relentlessly pursued art collections. As he grew, his interest in arts was majorly on Cubist artists like Braque, Leger, Picasso, and Gris. 

He promised to gift the Museum of Fine Arts Boston 120,000 of his postcards, and by late 2012, he donated 700 of his postcards to the Museum where an exhibition was opened for them. An exhibition titled The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection.  In 2013, Lauder donated his large Cubist art collection, worth over $1 billion, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection was made up of 34 pieces by Pablo Picasso, 17 pieces by Georges Braque, and 15 pieces by Juan Gris, making the collection a total of 81 pieces of Cubist Arts. As a long-time supporter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he led the creation of its research center for modern art and supported the research with $22 million.

 Recently, in 2019, he also donated his Oilette Postcards collection to the Newberry Library—26,000 in all, alongside funding their digitization.