L’Oréal cosmetics heiress was world’s wealthiest woman

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Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire and the world’s wealthiest woman, has died. She was 94.

Her death was announced in a statement from Jean-Paul Agon, chief executive officer at L’Oreal Group. She died on Wednesday at her home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb west of Paris, according to a company spokesman. No cause was given.

Bettencourt, the only child of L’Oréal founder Eugène Schueller, owned about one-third of the company’s shares. During her lifetime, the Paris-based company grew from a small hair-dye supplier into the largest maker of beauty products with more than 30 brands including Lancôme and Garnier sold in about 140 countries. In 2016 the company reported revenue of 25.8 billion euros ($38 billion). Her net worth was US$42.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“Friendship, taste for life, knowledge, health. I would say that these are the things that are the most valuable,” Bettencourt said in a rare interview with French literary magazine Egoïste in 1987. “Everything that isn’t measured is what matters most.”

After the death of Bettencourt’s husband, French conservative politician André Bettencourt, in 2007, the media-shy heiress spent her final years embroiled in a legal spat with their only child, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers.

Bettencourt-Meyers claimed her mother was mentally unfit and had been manipulated by her entourage, especially one friend to whom she gave about 1 billion euros in gifts and cash. In 2011, a French judge assigned Bettencourt’s daughter and two grandsons as guardians over her interests.

Liliane Bettencourt’s fortune now passes on to Bettencourt-Meyers, 64, who heads the family’s investment company. An academic, she wrote books on Greek mythology and Jewish-Christian relations. As main guardian of the family’s assets, including its stake in L’Oréal, Bettencourt-Meyers succeeds her mother as the world’s richest woman.

In the 1987 magazine interview, Bettencourt discussed the role that wealth may have played in her personal relationships.

“Obviously, it’s surely more comfortable to be certain that you are loved for your soul,” she said. “But I didn’t have this concern.” She said when she sometimes wondered whether she was loved for her money, “I have smiled and said to myself, ‘If it’s more, so much the better.’”

Secret recordings of Bettencourt, made by a former butler, spawned separate inquiries into allegations of campaign finance violations related to former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election. Bettencourt denied the reports. In 2013, French authorities dropped charges against Sarkozy.

Bettencourt also lost money in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Liliane Henriette Betsy Schueller was born Oct. 21, 1922, in Paris. She was five years old when her mother, Louise, died, leaving Liliane with what she called “an empty pit nothing could ever fill.” She was raised by Dominican nuns.

Bettencourt described her childhood as dominated by a stern, workaholic father who woke up every day at 4 a.m.

When she turned 15, she was sent to one of her father’s factories to glue labels on L’Oréal bottles.

While providing his daughter with France’s biggest fortune, Schueller had embarrassed her by his politics. Before and during the Second World War, he was a staunch supporter of La Cagoule, a fascist group with ties to the Nazi regime. During the 1930s, Schueller hosted La Cagoule’s meetings at L’Oréal’s headquarters in Paris. Bettencourt’s daughter, Françoise, went on to marry the grandson of a rabbi who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

L’Oréal owes its origins — and its name — to Aureole, a non-toxic hair colorant Schueller developed in 1907 and sold to Parisian beauty salons. Two years later, the young chemist registered his business under the name Safe Hair Dye Company of France.

After her father’s death in 1957, Bettencourt entrusted L’Oréal to his best friend, François Dalle, who remained CEO until 1984.

Lindsay Owen-Jones, who became CEO in 1988, turned the company into the global cosmetics giant it is today.

Bettencourt had two grandchildren. Her grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers, replaced her on L’Oréal’s board in 2012.

— Bloomberg News