Evelyn Lauder

Evelyn Lauder (née Hausner; August 12, 1936 – November 12, 2011) was an Austrian businesswoman, socialite and philanthropist.

She married Leonard Lauder, the son of Estee and Joseph Lauder, who co-founded the Estée Lauder cosmetics company. Evelyn joined the company and became senior corporate vice president and head of fragrance development. She created the Clinique brand and developed its line of products.

Lauder was one of the creators and popularizers of the pink ribbon as a symbol for awareness of breast cancer.

Early life She was born Evelyn Hausner in 1936 in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family. Lauder's family fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, using their household silver to get visas to Belgium. They then moved on to England where her mother was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man and Evelyn was placed in a nursery. The family arrived in New York City in 1940.

She graduated from Hunter College High School in 1954. She then attended Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, where she studied Psychology and Anthropology and also where she met her future husband, Leonard Lauder, then a trainee naval officer, on a blind date. The couple were married on July 5, 1959.

Lauder created the Clinique brand and developed its product line. She worked as the training director for Clinique and was the first person to wear the trademark white lab coat, now worn by Clinique salespeople at cosmetic departments worldwide.

Together with Penney, Lauder established The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and formalized the pink ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer awareness as part of Self magazine's second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue in 1992. Penney's inspiration to improve on the success of the magazine's first annual issue was to create a ribbon that would be placed in Estee Lauder's New York City stores. Lauder made the commitment to have the ribbons placed on the company's cosmetics counters across the United States.

By 1993, Lauder had overseen the creation of a new shade called Pink Ribbon that was part of her personal and corporate effort to raise breast cancer awareness. Her husband paid the cost of registering the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in all 50 states. By the start of 1995, some $900,000 had been raised for the foundation, including $120,000 from the sale of Pink Ribbon lipstick and blusher, and $190,000 from the sale of the Clinique Berry Kiss pink lipstick.

Following Lauder's death, Delta Air Lines, which had already dedicated one of its Boeing 767-400ER long-haul planes in honor of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation that Lauder founded and painted it in a pink livery while Lauder was living, re-christened and renamed the same plane in her memory.

Personal life She was married to Leonard Lauder, former chairman of the Estée Lauder Companies, from 1959 until her death. They had two sons: William P. Lauder and Gary M. Lauder, managing director of Lauder Partners LLC.

Death Evelyn Lauder died at home in Manhattan from complications of nongenetic ovarian cancer. She was a longtime resident of Palm Beach, Florida.