Estee Lauder (née Josephine Esther Menzer, born about 1908) was the founder of the international cosmetics empire that bears her name and the chief developer of its products.

Estee Lauder was hailed as the reigning queen of the cosmetics world well into the 1990s. Innovative and daring, with an extraordinary talent for marketing and promotion, Lauder founded the company that bears her name in 1946 and built it in close cooperation with her husband, Joseph Lauder, and sons, Leonard and Ronald. It remained the last privately held cosmetics company in the United States and was run by her oldest son, Leonard.

Growing Up

Although she carefully guarded the secret of her age ("It's the best kept secret since the D-Day invasion," she wrote in her autobiography, Estee, a Success Story), it is widely accepted that she was born on July 1, 1908. She was the youngest child of her French...