Estee Lauder

(1906 - 2004)

 

Estée Lauder (July 1, 1906 – April 24, 2004) was the founder of Estée Lauder Inc., a pioneering cosmetics company.

Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, Queens, New York, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She married Joseph Lauter in 1930, they had two sons, she divorced him in 1939, and re-married him in 1942. The Lauter family changed their surname to "Lauder" in the late 1930s. They remained married until his death in 1982.

Her younger son, Ronald Lauder, was a Republican political appointee in the Reagan administration, and developer of property in Berlin, among other endeavors.

Lauder died in her Manhattan manse of cardiopulmonary failure at the age of 97.

She was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. She was also the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Courtesy of:

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/sharansky/biography.html