Leonard Lauder

Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933) is an American billionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, in 1946.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Having been its CEO until 1999, Lauder is the chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.<ref name="EL website">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During his tenure as the CEO, the company went public at The New York Stock Exchange in 1996 and acquired several major cosmetics brands, including MAC Cosmetics, Aveda, Bobbi Brown, and La Mer.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2013, Lauder promised his collection of Cubist art to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection is valued at over $1 billion and constitutes one of the largest gifts in the museum's history.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Lauder's net worth at US$32.3 billion as of September 2021, the 44th richest person in the world.<ref name="Bloomberg Profile">Template:Cite news</ref>

Early life and education

Lauder is the elder son of Joseph and Estée Lauder and the elder brother of Ronald Lauder. His family is Jewish. He married Evelyn Hausner in July 1959.<ref name=NYT1995>Template:Cite news</ref> They had two sons, William, executive chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies, and Gary, managing director of Lauder Partners LLC.<ref name="EL website"/> He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and he also studied at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business before serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.

Career

He joined Estée Lauder in 1958 when he was 25.<ref name="EL website" /> He created the company's first research and development laboratory in the mid-1990s and was responsible for the company acquiring brands like MAC, Bobbi Brown and Aveda.<ref name="Leonard Lauder">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Under his leadership in the late 1980s, Estée Lauder opened its first store in Moscow with support from the Gosbank daughter the Moscow Narodny Bank Limited in London.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1986, Lauder hosted a New York City luncheon attended by Donald Trump and Soviet Ambassador to the United States Yuri Dubinin during which Trump hashed out his partnership with the Kremlin.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Sheil, Martin (12 July 2018). Connecting Elliott Broidy Related Dots — Offshore and On — Some Russian — Some Not. The Medium. Retrieved 6 December 2024.</ref>

Lauder stepped down as CEO of Estée Lauder in 1999, but remains chairman emeritus of the company and is known around the company as "Chief Teaching Officer".<ref name="Leonard Lauder"/>

Lauder gained notoriety in 2001 for creating the Lipstick index, a since discredited economic indicator, meant to reflect a proclivity to spend money on luxury items even in the face of crisis.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> For many years, he has resided on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. On January 1, 2015, Lauder married photographer Judy Ellis Glickman.<ref>Rosman, Katherine (April 29, 2015). "Beginning Again: The Love Story of Leonard Lauder and Judy Glickman". The New York Times. Retrieved June 22, 2016</ref>

Leonard Lauder, unlike his brother, supported Kathy Hochul's first campaign for New York governor in 2022.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Art collection

Lauder is a major art collector (he began by buying Art Deco postcards when he was six), but his particular focus, rather than on American artists, is on works by the Cubist masters Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Léger. He also collects Klimt. Much of his art comes from some of the world's most celebrated collections, including those of Gertrude Stein, the Swiss banker Raoul La Roche, and the British art historian Douglas Cooper.<ref name="MetCubism">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston opened an exhibition of 700 of his postcards, a tiny part of the promised gift he has made to the museum of 120,000 postcards: The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection. In an interview in The New Yorker, Lauder explained how postcards turned him into a collector, and how these "mini-masterpieces" remained his lifelong pursuit to the point where his late wife, Evelyn, called the collection his "mistress".<ref name="NewYorker">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He donated his collection of Oilette postcards, published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, to Chicago's Newberry Library, and funded their digitization; the Newberry launched the 26,000-item Tuck digital collection in 2019.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Lauder's interest in postcards led him to be acquainted with one of the owners of the Gotham Book Mart, a Manhattan bookstore, and he sought to help the Gotham re-establish its presence in the city when the owner had sold its long-time building and needed a new space. Lauder bought a building at 16 East 46th Street along with a partner, letting the building's storefront space to the Gotham. Later, the Gotham fell behind on rents, eventually resulting in Lauder and his partner to file for eviction. In a much-publicized closure of the bookstore, the New York City Marshal later auctioned the store's inventory, which was bought in a lot by Lauder and his partner to some protest from many other independent book sellers and collectors who were present at the proceedings and hoping to purchase some of the bibliophilic treasures.<ref name="Gotham">Template:Cite news</ref>

Philanthropy

Arts and culture

Lauder has long been a major benefactor of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1971, he joined the museum's acquisitions board and in 1977, by then president of his family's business, he became a Whitney trustee.<ref>Robin Pogrebin and Timothy L. O'Brien (December 5, 2004). "A Museum of One's Own". The New York Times.</ref> He became president in 1990<ref name="nytimes.com">Grace Glueck (June 14, 1990). "Leonard Lauder to Head Whitney Museum Board". The New York Times.</ref> and has been chairman since 1994. He has donated both money and many works of art to the Whitney, and is the museum's most prolific fundraiser. His 2008 donation to it of $131 million is the largest in the museum's history.<ref name="Forbes profile">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Through the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, he and his wife have also sponsored several exhibitions at the Whitney.<ref name="nytimes.com"/> The fifth-floor permanent collection galleries are named for the couple. In 1998, he told a reporter for The New York Times that his "dream job" was to be the Whitney Museum's director. Most recently, Lauder gave $131 million for the Whitney's endowment.

A long-time supporter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Lauder led the creation of a research center for Modern art at the museum, which he helped support through a $22 million endowment made alongside museum trustees and other benefactors. In April 2013, he promised his collection of 81 pieces of Cubist art,<ref name="The Met">The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art</ref><ref>"A Collector's Personal Perspective, A Met Exhibition Spotlights a Lauder Trove of Cubism". The New York Times. October 10, 2014.</ref> consisting of 34 pieces by Pablo Picasso, 17 by Georges Braque, 15 by Fernand Léger, and 15 by Juan Gris to the museum; together, they are valued at more than one billion dollars.<ref name="MetCubism"/> It has been described by William Acquavella, of Acquavella Galleries, as "without doubt the most important collection any private person has put together in many, many years,"<ref>"Leonard Lauder's art collection: Focus, focus, focus". The Economist.</ref> Art historian Emily Braun, who co-organized the 2014 Met exhibition of Lauder's Cubist collection with Rebecca Rabinow, has been Lauder's personal curator since 1987.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Social causes

Lauder is co-founder and chairman of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee of the Aspen Institute, chairman of The Aspen Institute International Committee, honorary chair of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and a member of the President's Council of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital.<ref>The Family Estée Lauder Companies.</ref> Along with his wife, Evelyn, he helped create the Evelyn H Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.<ref>Vanessa Friedman (December 23, 2010). "Lunch with the FT: Leonard Lauder". Financial Times.</ref> In February 2022, he donated $125 million to University of Pennsylvania to establish a new tuition-free nurse practitioner program within Penn Nursing.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Memoir

Lauder's memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty was published in 2020.<ref>"The Company I Keep Book".</ref>

Awards and honors

Year	Title
2003	Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, presented by Awards Council member Ehud Barak<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2017	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2019	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2020	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See also

• List of billionaires
• Lauder Institute

Further reading

• Template:Cite magazine
• Template:Cite news