Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933) is an Americanbillionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother,Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to theEstée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents,Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, in 1946.^[1] Having been its CEO until 1999, Lauder is the chairman emeritus ofThe Estée Lauder Companies Inc.^[2] During his tenure as the CEO, the companywent public atThe New York Stock Exchange in 1996 and acquired several major cosmetics brands, includingMAC Cosmetics,Aveda,Bobbi Brown, andLa Mer.^[3][4]

In 2013, Lauder promised his collection ofCubist art toThe Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection is valued at over $1 billion and constitutes one of the largest gifts in the museum's history.^[5]

Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Lauder's net worth at US$32.3 billion as of September 2021, the 44th richest person in the world.^[6]

Lauder is the elder son of Joseph andEstée Lauder and the elder brother ofRonald Lauder. His family is Jewish. He marriedEvelyn Hausner in July 1959.^[7] They had two sons,William, executive chairman ofThe Estée Lauder Companies, and Gary, managing director of Lauder Partners LLC.^[2] He is a graduate of theWharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and he also studied atColumbia University's Graduate School of Business before serving as a lieutenant in theU.S. Navy.

He joined Estée Lauder in 1958 when he was 25.^[2] He created the company's first research and development laboratory in the mid-1990s and was responsible for the company acquiring brands likeMAC,Bobbi Brown andAveda.^[8] Under his leadership in the late 1980s, Estée Lauder opened its first store inMoscow with support from theGosbank daughter theMoscow Narodny Bank Limited inLondon.^[9]

In 1986, Lauder hosted a New York City luncheon attended byDonald Trump and Soviet Ambassador to the United StatesYuri Dubinin during which Trump hashed out his partnership with theKremlin.^{[10][11][12][13]}

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".^[8]

Lauder gained notoriety in 2001 for creating theLipstick index, a since discreditedeconomic indicator, meant to reflect a proclivity to spend money on luxury items even in the face of crisis.^[14] For many years, he has resided on theUpper East Side in Manhattan. On January 1, 2015, Lauder married photographer Judy Ellis Glickman.^[15]

Leonard Lauder, unlike his brother, supportedKathy Hochul's first campaign for New York governor in 2022.^[16]

Lauder is a major art collector (he began by buyingArt Deco postcards when he was six), but his particular focus, rather than on American artists, is on works by theCubist mastersPicasso,Braque,Gris, andLéger. He also collectsKlimt. Much of his art comes from some of the world's most celebrated collections, including those ofGertrude Stein, the Swiss bankerRaoul La Roche, and the British art historianDouglas Cooper.^[17]

In 2012, theMuseum of Fine Arts inBoston 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 inThe 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".^[18] He donated his collection of Oilette postcards, published byRaphael Tuck & Sons, to Chicago'sNewberry Library, and funded their digitization; the Newberry launched the 26,000-item Tuck digital collection in 2019.^[19]

Lauder's interest in postcards led him to be acquainted with one of the owners of theGotham 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 East46th 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, theNew 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.^[20]

Lauder has long been a major benefactor of theWhitney 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.^[21] He became president in 1990^[22] 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.^[23] Through the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, he and his wife have also sponsored several exhibitions at the Whitney.^[22] The fifth-floor permanent collection galleries are named for the couple. In 1998, he told a reporter forThe 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 theMetropolitan 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 ofCubist art,^[24][25] consisting of 34 pieces byPablo Picasso, 17 byGeorges Braque, 15 byFernand Léger, and 15 byJuan Gris to the museum; together, they are valued at more than one billion dollars.^[17] It has been described byWilliam Acquavella, ofAcquavella Galleries, as "without doubt the most important collection any private person has put together in many, many years,"^[26] Art historianEmily Braun, who co-organized the 2014 Met exhibition of Lauder's Cubist collection with Rebecca Rabinow, has been Lauder's personal curator since 1987.^[27]

Lauder is co-founder and chairman of theAlzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, a member of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, a trustee of theAspen Institute, chairman of The Aspen Institute International Committee, honorary chair of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and a member of the President's Council ofMemorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital.^[28] 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.^[29] In February 2022, he donated $125 million toUniversity of Pennsylvania to establish a new tuition-free nurse practitioner program withinPenn Nursing.^[30]

Lauder's memoir,The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty was published in 2020.^[31]

• List of billionaires
• Lauder Institute

• Dobrzynski, Judith H. (October 23, 2012)."The Pleasures of Postcards".The New Yorker. RetrievedMarch 2, 2025.
• Vogel, Carol (December 18, 2024)."Buy, Donate, Repeat: At 91, Leonard Lauder Has More to Give".The New York Times. RetrievedMarch 2, 2025.

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