Estee Lauder

Estée Lauder was an American businesswoman whose 60-year career produced her co-founding of The Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics empire — making her one of the defining American 20th-century female entrepreneurs and one of the few women on the Time 100 list of the most-influential people of the 20th century. She was born Josephine Esther Mentzer on July 1, 1906 (or 1908; her birth records are disputed), in Corona, Queens, New York City, into a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant family. Her father Max Mentzer was a Hungarian-Jewish hardware-store owner from Hungary and her mother Rose Schotz Rosenthal was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant.

Her breakthrough came across her 1924 apprenticeship to her Hungarian-Jewish chemist uncle John Schotz at his New Way Laboratories cosmetics-formulation operation in New York City. Her uncle's 1920s and 1930s skin-cream formulations — particularly his Super Rich All-Purpose Crème — produced her early-career cosmetics-formulation expertise. Her 1930 first marriage to Joseph Lauter (whose surname she adapted as "Lauder" for her cosmetics business) produced their 1933 son Leonard Lauder.

Her 1946 co-founding of Estée Lauder Companies with her husband Joseph Lauder — initially with four-product line (Cleansing Oil, Skin Lotion, Super Rich All-Purpose Creme, and Creme Pack) — launched her American cosmetics-business career. Her 1948 first major department-store distribution deal with Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City — produced by her sales technique of personally demonstrating cosmetics on customers' faces — launched her subsequent department-store cosmetics-counter business model.

Her 1953 launch of Youth Dew bath oil — the first commercially successful American "single-bottle perfume that women could buy for themselves" — launched her 1950s American cosmetics-business expansion. Her subsequent expansion across multiple cosmetics brands — Aramis (1964), Clinique (1968), Prescriptives (1979), and Origins (1990) — produced her later international cosmetics empire. The Estée Lauder Companies have continued to shape 20th and 21st-century international cosmetics-business practice. She died on April 24, 2004, at approximately age 95 or 97, in New York City.

Her name Estée derives from a personally-modified French spelling of her birth-name middle name Esther (from the Hebrew Esther — the Old Testament queen). Estée has been a rare but enduring American girls' name since the mid-20th century.