Estee Lauder

On January 15, 1930, Estee married Joseph Lauter, a surname that was changed to Lauder shortly after the marriage. During this period, Estee was too preoccupied with establishing her business, as a result of which, their marriage ended in a divorce in 1939.

The couple remarried on December 7, 1942 and they remained together until Joseph’s death in 1982. They had two sons; Leonard born in 1933 and Ronald in 1944.

After the death of her husband, Estee Lauder spent more and more time in philanthropic works. Among others, she set up Joseph T. Lauder Institute for Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in memory of her husband. She also led a very flamboyant social life.

Estée Lauder was born as Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City. Officially her birthday falls on July 1, 1908, but according to other accounts, she was born two years earlier on July1, 1906.

Estee’s father, Max Mentzer, was a Czechoslovakian from Holice (now in Slovakia). He migrated to USA in 1890s. Working first as a custom-tailor, he eventually opened a hardware store beneath their family home in Corona.

Estee’s mother, Rose nee Schotz nee Rosenthal, was a Hungarian from Sátoráljaújhely. She came to the USA in 1898 with her five children to join her then husband Abraham Rosenthal. Eventually in 1905, she married Max Mentzer, ten years her younger.

Apart from her five children from her previous marriage, she bore Max four more, Estee being the youngest of them. Although christened Josephine, she preferred to be called by her nickname Estee, to which she later added an accent, making it Estée.

In spite of having to manage such a large family, Rose was gorgeous woman, conscious about her looks and always used a parasol to protect her skin from ultra violet rays. As a child, Estee loved to brush her hair, wanting to grow up like her. She was also influenced greatly by her father.

In 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Estee’s maternal uncle, John Schotz, came to live with them. A chemist by profession, he set up a laboratory in an empty stable behind their house. Named New Way Laboratories, it manufactured creams, lotions, rouge and perfumes, using natural ingredients.

Always interested in beauty, Estee now began to spend lots of time, watching his uncle at work. By and by, she started helping him in his business, learning from him how to wash her face or have a facial massage.

Slowly, she started selling the products to her classmates at Newton High School, initially calling them ‘jars of hope’. To prove the effectiveness of her uncle’s products, she also started giving them beauty treatments.

With time, she started giving her uncle’s products specific names like Super Rich All-Purpose Cream, Six-In-One Cold Cream and Dr. Schotz's Viennese Cream etc. But she went into big time marketing only after she graduated from school.

One day, Estee Lauder went to have her hair done at a local salon. Impressed by her delicate skin, its owner, Florence Morris, asked the secret behind it. The next day, Estee walked in with four of her uncle’s products. Impressed, Morris asked her to sell the products at her salon.

While she was selling her products at the salon, she had a humiliating experience. One day, she asked a customer from where she had bought the blouse she was wearing, to which the customer replied, it should not matter to Estee for she would never be able to afford that.

Stung by the customer’s behaviour, Estee vowed that she would earn so much money that she would be able to buy whatever she wanted. She now doubled her effort, selling her products at salons and clubs. This continued despite her marriage to Joseph Lauter in 1930 and birth of their eldest child in 1933.

During this initial period, Estee spent the nights working in her kitchen to improve the products, stirring over pots and pans, using natural ingredients. During the day, she visited clients, selling products, giving free make-up demonstration. She also provided samples to her clients, sure that they would return for more.

Sometime now, knowing that social contacts are essential for growth of her business, she started reinventing herself. Going to the extent of fabricating her past, she raised herself to the level of her clients. For many years, people knew she belonged to a European noble family.