Leonard Lauder, Billionaire Art Collector and Estée Lauder Heir, Dies at 92

Leonard Lauder, a prominent figure in the art world and the former chairman emeritus of Estée Lauder Companies, has died at the age of ninety-two. Born in 1933 in New York, he was the first child of Estée and Joseph H. Lauder, who founded the company in 1946. Under his leadership, the company’s revenue skyrocketed from $800,000 in 1958 to more than $16 billion by 2021, while his own wealth reached $15.1 billion in 2024, as reported by Forbes. A passionate art collector, Lauder famously donated 78 Cubist artworks worth over $1 billion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013, and he also gave $131 million to the Whitney Museum from 1977 to 2011.