Estée Lauder

Estée Lauder (1908 to 2004), born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, Queens, New York City, was an American businesswoman who co-founded her eponymous cosmetics company with her husband, Joseph Lauter, later Lauder. She was the second child of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, worked in the family hardware store as a girl and learned the beauty trade from her maternal uncle, the chemist Dr. John Schotz, whose New Way Laboratories sold creams, lotions, rouge and fragrances. In 1946 she and her husband launched Estée Lauder Cosmetic Co. in New York, and in 1953 she introduced her first fragrance, Youth-Dew, a bath oil that doubled as a perfume. She was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century.