Estée Lauder

Estee Lauder was the daughter of immigrants, and lived above her father's hardware store in working-class Queens. Her family called her 'Esty', and when a public school official spelled it Estee, it stuck. In 1930, she married a garment center businessman named Joseph Lauter (later changed to Lauder), and had a son, Leonard. During the 1930s, she began selling face creams that her uncle, a chemist, mixed in a makeshift laboratory behind the family house. Estee went to beauty salons to give free demonstrations to women under hair dryers. In 1939, she divorced Joseph and moved to Florida. She and Joseph remarried in 1942, had a second son, Ronald, and went into business together. Her persistence paid off in 1948, when she persuaded a buyer at Saks to place an order. She and her husband filled the order themselves, cooking up the creams in their factory and bottling them in attractive jars. In two days, Saks sold out. Estee Lauder became a household name in 1953, when she introduced a f