Before diving into what some of the biggest players in the business had to say about Leonard Lauder, let’s look at the highlight reel of what he achieved for the brand and company his mother established back in 1946.

• After a boyhood spent helping pack Estée Lauder boxes, Leonard, a native New Yorker, did a stint in the U.S. Navy followed by attendance at Columbia University, where he scooped up a business degree.
• Landing at Mom’s company in 1958 with the then-grand notion of taking the U.S.-based business global, Lauder spent the next four decades doing precisely that.
• Steadily rising through the ranks as President, CEO and Chairman, he is widely credited with the EL Co’s move into Europe and Asia, is viewed as the mastermind of one of its biggest brands – Clinique – and, with the acquisitions of Aveda, MAC, Bobbi Brown and La Mer, crafted the blueprint of the modern prestige beauty conglomerate.
• On the money front, Lauder took the company public in 1995 and saw the coffers build from less than $1 million when he officially joined to a recent market cap of $24.3 billion.

Is EL Cos on a somewhat shakier fiscal ground today? Yes, which we’ve fully covered here, in this look-see at family succession drama. Will that matter to Leonard Lauder’s legacy? Not in the slightest.

Heard About Town

Since his passing on June 14 at age 92, some of the biggest titans in the beauty industry have shared the impact Lauder had on their careers. While the cynic in me is rolling her eyes at some of the blatant relevancy bids attached to a few of these tributes (even the most cursory of encounters with Lauder are being served up as earth-shaking, changed-my-life events), plenty of people who dealt with Lauder day-in and day-out give testament to the fact that his old school, respect-based management style is a true rarity. And yes, there are some who met Leonard Lauder only on a single occasion but their memories help flesh out the bigger picture of this once-in-a-lifetime guy.

Bobbi Brown

Bobbi Brown thanks Lauder for teaching her “everything” (and for her boat). To say Leonard Lauder changed Bobbi Brown’s life is a massive understatement. In 1995, just four years after the successful but not yet ultra-well-known makeup artist had created her line of 10 neutral lipsticks, Lauder saw promise in the venture and snapped it up.

I think we all know what happened next: staggering global success for the Lauder-owned Bobbi Brown brand. As one of the few founders who stuck around after the acquisition ink was dry, Brown eventually became disenchanted with the way her brand was being run by EL Companies. And as soon as her non-compete expired, Brown couldn’t launch her edgy, inclusive and already wildly successful Jones Road brand fast enough. Still, as her memorial Instagram post attests, Brown holds a special place for Leonard Lauder in her heart.

“I’m gutted but grateful,” she wrote. “I learned everything about growing and nurturing a brand from him. He gave me permission to be myself and told me to never ask for permission but to beg for forgiveness, which I often did. Steven [Plofker, Brown’s real estate developer husband] and I built the first freestanding store in Montclair NJ without permission and asked him to come and bless it and he did that with a smile on his face of pride.”

In the handful of images Brown used to illustrate her post, she included one of her sailboat christened TYLL (short for “Thank You, Leonard Lauder”) and ended by saying how grateful she was for the recent three-hour lunch she’d had with the famous makeup mogul and art patron.

Yes, Brown could leave her Lauder-acquired namesake brand and launch a new one that is somehow making her even more famous and successful, and the great man would still make plenty of time for her.

John Demsey

John Demsey applauds Lauder for helping create, “The Greatest Prestige Beauty Company of All Time.” As a former executive group president who exited EL Companies under not-so-great circumstances (code: after 31 years at the corporation, he was forced out after higher-ups freaked out at one of his social media posts), John Demsey could have easily taken a pass at weighing in on Lauder’s legacy.

But given how he felt about the man, there was no way Demsey was letting that happen. “Leonard Lauder was the most brilliant and cultured man I have ever met,” Demsey told Beauty Inc. “He leaves a legacy of vision, creativity, passion, humanity and kindness. We would not have the beauty industry we have today without the foundation he created for over 60 years.”

Ron Robinson

Ron Robinson spotlights Lauder’s massive prescience with Clinique. Long before creating his own thriving and award-winning BeautyStat Cosmetics brand, product formulator Ron Robinson spent years toiling in the development labs at some of the biggest conglomerates in the beauty business.

And in a pretty adorable post on LinkedIn, Robinson recently shared an early 1990s picture of himself, clad in an Estée Lauder Companies T-shirt, hard at work. “As a cosmetic chemist who had the privilege of working with Clinique, I want to express my heartfelt admiration for his legacy,” he wrote. “Leonard Lauder’s vision for Clinique revolutionized the beauty industry, and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it. I was so very, very proud to work for his company.”

Michele Shakeshaft

A makeup artist dubs Lauder a, “People-First Leader.” Yes, lots of industry-famous (and legitimately famous, too) people have shared their thoughts about Lauder in the past month. But I wanted to wrap up by giving a platform to someone who isn’t quite as well-known.

I hadn’t heard of makeup artist Michele Shakeshaft prior to researching this piece, but after punching “Leonard Lauder” into the Instagram search bar, her page – The Style Shakeup – popped up. Here, Shakeshaft, who is affiliated with the Bobbi Brown brand, shared a cherished memory with her 4300 followers. She had the self-expressed “honor” of prepping Lauder for an onscreen appearance in Washington, DC, and loved every minute of it. “I was nervous when I arrived, but my nerves were calmed as soon as I walked in,” Shakeshaft recalled on Instagram. “He wouldn’t let me ask questions about him. He said, ‘You know enough about me, I want to learn about you.’ He was kind, funny, curious and gracious. The world has lost a people-first leader.”

An Anomaly In a Cutthroat World

Having had the good fortune to have interacted with Lauder on many occasions throughout my journalism career, I throw my own two cents in here. He was generous with his time and attention when meeting with me and my fellow beauty editors; at public events his deep love, admiration and delight for his first wife, Evelyn, was palpable.

But what matters, at the end of the day, is that Leonard Lauder may have broken the mold. In a business that’s not known for being especially warm and fuzzy, he was a wildly empathetic leader who nurtured both people and brands alike. Every CEO in America – make that the world – should take a page from his book.