Estée Lauder's family ran a hardware store in Corona, Queens

With the advent of charge cards, Estée Lauder fought to get her products in department stores to benefit from impulse purchases

Because Estée Lauder focused on personal relationships and demonstrations as one of her primary sales strategies, getting her product in front of enough people was an early struggle. Similarly, many customers wanted to buy her products, but didn't always have the cash on hand. One of her biggest accomplishments was earning a retail spot at Saks on 5th Ave in Manhattan, which paved the way for her brand to become a household name and gave customers more flexibility to make purchases on the spot.

Explore old photos of Estée Lauder's life

Despite her humble upbringing, Estée Lauder's love of beauty and glamour helped propel her social climb. Lauder became friends with many elites over the course of her life—including the late Princess Diana—owned homes in the Hamptons and the South of France, and turned her family business into a cosmetic empire. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The Lauder family still owns more than 80% of Estée Lauder Companies

When Estée Lauder went public in 1995, the company implemented a dual-class stock structure to retain family ownership of the company. Alongside owning a majority of the stock, almost everyone in the family also works within the company, leading to the family's reputation as a cosmetic dynasty.

As part of her sales strategy, Estée Lauder personally demonstrated her early products at hair salons

Estée Lauder differentiated itself from other luxury cosmetics brands (including those helmed by the fiercely competitive Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden) partly through its product demonstrations. Lauder believed that actually touching her customers' faces to show them both how the product worked and how to use it was an essential part of her sales pitch.

Estée Lauder divorced and later remarried Joseph Lauder, her husband and business partner

After first marrying in 1933, Estée Lauder divorced Joseph Lauder, primarily because he wasn't as driven and ambitious as Estée. They ultimately remarried in 1942 and were rarely seen apart. While Estée was a visionary leader for the company, Joseph handled much of the behind-the-scenes work.

Estée Lauder's son, Leonard Lauder, transformed Estée Lauder into a global powerhouse

Leonard Lauder became president of Estée Lauder Companies in 1972 and is credited with much of the brand's expansion. Under his leadership, the company launched new lines like Aramis and acquired luxury brands to bolster its position in the luxury beauty market.

Estée Lauder used wealthy people's bathrooms to curate the color of the jars her products were sold in

While Lauder herself was just starting her cosmetics empire, she knew wealthy people who could afford high-quality products would always be her target market. In order to make her products as appealing to this market as possible, Lauder held up different colors of glass bottles in people's bathrooms to see what would look best with their decorations before landing on a turquoise bottle with a gold cap.

Read Time Magazine's profile of Estée Lauder—the only woman named to a list of the most influential business leaders of the 20th century

Time Magazine's 1998 profile of Estée Lauder credited much of Lauder's global success to her incredible work ethic and her dedication to creating the highest-quality products, even if those products weren't trendy.

'Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman:' Listen to Estée Lauder's legendary vision for word-of-mouth marketing

Without a large advertising budget, Lauder focused her marketing strategy on making high-quality products that women would love enough to tell their friends about. Those friends would later inevitably buy Estée Lauder products.

Leonard Lauder, one of Estée's sons, invented the slant on a tube of lipstick

Leonard Lauder was known for being an innovator, both in business and in product. He's credited with creating the now-standard slant of a lipstick tube, slicing the top off a then-bullet-shaped lipstick to better fit women's lips. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

Estée Lauder once broke a bottle of the hit perfume 'Youth Dew' to convince French department stores to carry the product

Youth Dew, originally launched in 1953 as a bath oil, was wildly successful in the American market and one of the early products that cemented Estée Lauder as a luxury cosmetics brand. When the Galeries Lafayette in Paris hesitated to sell the perfume, Lauder "accidentally" broke a bottle of Youth Dew, causing the smell to spread throughout the department store. Shoppers began asking for the scent, and the department store agreed to sell it.

To ward off competition from Revlon, Estée Lauder launched Clinique—the first dermatologist-approved skincare line—in 1968

Clinique launched in 1968 as an entire product line, as opposed to just a single product, which was rare for cosmetics brands at the time. Clinique marked Estée Lauder's first venture into a younger, less luxury-oriented retail market.

Kevin Warsh married Estée Lauder's granddaughter in 2002

The newest Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, is married to Jane Lauder, who served as Estée Lauder Companies' chief data officer until late 2024. Her stake in Estée Lauder Companies is part of what makes Warsh the richest Fed chair on record.

Esther Howland built a Valentine's Day card empire in 19th-century New England

In 1849, Howland launched her card business, the New England Valentine Company, in her home, staffing an assembly line with her friends, who'd piece together the intricate valentines. The cards were elaborately decorated, with silk, lace, and romantic verse. Howland's annual sales eventually grew to $100K and helped popularize the holiday in the US.

Ray Dalio grew up in New York City, and his dad was a jazz musician

Dalio grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens—though his family moved to the city's suburbs when he was eight-years-old. His father played music in famous Manhattan nightclubs like the Copacabana, while his mother stayed home.

At 18, Eleanor taught immigrant children in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods

After finishing school in London, Roosevelt returned to New York and volunteered at a settlement house on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side, working directly with immigrant families living in poverty.

Dry goods stores sold products such as textiles and linens

RH Macy started Macy’s as a dry goods store in 1858. At the time, the store was located on New York City’s 14th Street. Dry goods stores later rebranded themselves for the future of retail around the 1930s.

'I got my start by giving myself a start.'

- Businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919)

At the age of seven, Grace Hopper dismantled alarm clocks

Foreshadowing a career in computers, Hopper exhibited a curiosity for gadgets at a young age and took apart seven clocks, determined to understand how they worked. Despite having a dollhouse, Hopper built an elevator for it and showed a greater interest in building toy furniture than playing with dolls.

A reclusive billionaire ran Sears before its bankruptcy

Former Sears CEO and hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was once kidnapped from his home in Greenwich, Connecticut by criminals looking to get rich. Some argue that the incident colored Sears’ history.

Jeff Bezos’ grandfather made his own needles by hand for the cattle on his ranch

Jeff Bezos’ mother gave birth to him at 17 years old, and his grandfather was very involved in his life. Bezos spent much of his childhood helping out on his grandfather’s ranch, for instance. In this short clip, Bezos shares some of his thoughts on his family members and his early years of life.

The origin and history of stock exchanges

When were stocks first sold? Though debt was first sold in Venice in the 14th century, stocks proper began in the Netherlands. To fund its spice trade across the world in 1602, the Dutch East India Company sold stocks to individual investors, a novel approach to raising funds. It was the Dutch West India Company that founded New York—the site of some of the world’s greatest stock exchanges. Listen to a concise historical overview here.

David Ogilvy’s brother helped get him into the advertising business

Ogilvy sent a copy of his stove sales manual, "The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker" (which Fortune magazine later called "probably the best sales manual ever written”) to his brother, who was working at London ad agency Mather & Crowther at the time.

The modern large chain dollar store business model originated in the South

The first Dollar General store opened in Kentucky, the first Family Dollar in North Carolina, and the first Dollar Tree in Southern Virginia. To this day, dollar stores have more distribution centers in the South than anywhere else in the US.

Nike started out as a Japanese shoe distributor called Blue Ribbon Sports

Nike cofounder Phil Knight’s first business venture was distributing Onitsuka Tiger running shoes in America. Knight would drive to track meets and sell the shoes out of the back of his car.

In its famous catalog, Sears sold $600 DIY house kits from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in an estimated 100,000 'Sears and Roebuck homes.'

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.