Ronald Lauder

Ronald Steven Lauder (born February 26, 1944) is an American businessman. He is the sole heir to The Estée Lauder Companies, founded by his parents Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder in 1946, following the death of his brother Leonard Lauder in 2025.

According to Forbes, Lauder had a net worth of $4.7 billion as of May 2025 (number 796 on Forbes' list of billionaires). Lauder is a longtime Republican Party donor, and supporter and longtime friend of President Donald Trump; he has been credited with planting the idea of annexing Greenland in Trump's mind.

Lauder ran in the Republican primary for mayor of New York City in 1989.

Lauder was born in New York City to a Jewish family, the son of Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, founders of Estée Lauder Companies. He is the younger brother of Leonard Lauder, former chairman of the board of the Estée Lauder Companies.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science and holds a bachelor's degree in International Business from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied at the University of Paris and received a Certificate in International Business from the University of Brussels.

Lauder started to work for the Estée Lauder Company in 1964 as head of the international department. In 1984, he became a deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy at the United States Department of Defense in the Ronald Reagan administration.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan named him as the United States ambassador to Austria, a position he held until 1987. As ambassador, he fired diplomatic officer Felix Bloch, who later became known in connection with the Robert Hanssen espionage case.

As a Republican, he made a bid to become the mayor of New York City in 1989, losing to Rudy Giuliani in the Republican primary (Giuliani lost to David Dinkins in the general election but defeated Dinkins in 1993). His campaign managers were Roger Ailes of Fox News and Arthur Finkelstein, a strong supporter of Richard Nixon. Michael Massing, writing of this nomination race, notes that politically Lauder 'seemed out of step with most American Jews; ... he ran to the right of Rudolph Giuliani. And, on Israeli issues, he was a vocal supporter of the Likud party, with long-standing ties to Benjamin Netanyahu." Lauder spent $14 million of his funds on the race. In 1994, he successfully led a campaign to place term limits on the mayor. In the Republican primary, Giuliani had 77,150 (67.0%) vote to 37,960 (33.0%) for Lauder.

In 1998, Lauder was asked by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to begin Track II negotiations with Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad; these negotiations continued after the election of Ehud Barak to the post. Lauder communicated a new-found willingness on Assad's part to make compromises with the Israelis in an overall land for peace deal, and his draft "Treaty of Peace Between Israel and Syria" formed an important part of the (ultimately fruitless) Israeli-Syrian negotiations that occurred in January 2000 in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Lauder manages investments in real estate and media, including Central European Media Enterprises and Israeli TV. In 2010, Lauder founded RWL Water, LLC.

Lauder has been involved with organizations, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish National Fund, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbinical College of America, Brandeis University, and the Abraham Fund. With his brother, he founded the Lauder Institute at the Wharton School. Lauder has also served as the finance chairman of the New York Republican State Committee. In 2003, Lauder founded and became the president of Lauder Business School in Vienna, Austria.

Lauder led a movement to introduce term limits in the New York City Council, which were subsequently imposed on most NYC elected officials, including the Mayor and City Council, after a citywide referendum in 1993. In 1996, voters turned down a council proposal to extend term limits. Lauder spent $4 million on the two referendums.

On November 16, 2001, Lauder opened the Neue Galerie in New York, an art museum dedicated to art from Germany and Austria from the early 20th century. It holds one of the best collections of works by Egon Schiele in the world.

On June 18, 2006, he purchased from Maria Altmann and her family, the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt for $135 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting at that time. Lauder called the painting "Our Mona Lisa". He reportedly saw Klimt's portrait as a youth in Vienna and had admired it since. The painting, a Nazi-looted art piece which had just been restored to Altmann following years of negotiation and litigation with the Austrian government, now forms the centerpiece of the museum's collection. Lauder was portrayed by Ben Miles in the film about the painting, Woman in Gold (2015).

Lauder also has the world's largest private collection of medieval and Renaissance armor.

Lauder has repeatedly come to the defense of Israel in public and is seen as an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In May 2012, he reacted "with dismay" to a suggestion by Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore to impose a European Union-wide import ban on products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Gilmore said were "illegal" and made peace between Israel and the Palestinians "impossible". Lauder said, "Such boycott calls are cynical and hypocritical. Minister Gilmore is taking aim at the only liberal democracy in the Middle East while keeping quiet about those who really wreak havoc in the region: the Assads, Ahmadinejads and their allies Hezbollah and Hamas." He added that "the West Bank territories are legally disputed and not illegally occupied."

In remarks to the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians made on June 28, 2011, Lauder reportedly scolded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a number of missteps, including lacking a diplomatic plan heading into the September UN vote on Palestinian statehood and setting preconditions for negotiations as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, according to Haaretz. However, in June 2012, on the third anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at Bar-Ilan University, Lauder published a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers in which he called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table. "Accept the offer to talk, President Abbas. It takes two sides to make peace," Lauder wrote.

Lauder has participated in a number of large media deals in Israel, among which was his purchase of part of commercial television Channel 10.

In September 2011, Israeli media published accounts that Lauder had put heavy pressure on the executives of the channel to broadcast a personal apology to the businessman Sheldon Adelson with regard to a profile that the channel had broadcast in January 2011. The apology read, "After the broadcast of the piece, we checked the accusations. Our checks revealed that the accusations were – and are – completely false ... We are very regretful that we did not check these accusations before broadcasting them." Lauder's forcing of the form of the apology led to the resignation of the channel's news chief Reudor Benziman, its news editor, Ruti Yuval, and its presenter, Guy Zohar (who continues in another post in Channel 10), who criticized Lauder for the pressure he exerted. Because of the attacks, detailed above, on Lauder (who had been until then the last major funder of the channel), he decided to reconsider his financial support. If the channel lost its funding, it would have difficulty continuing to operate to its current standard past October 2011.

On November 3, 2011, The Second Authority for Television and Radio decided on the issue in which it decided that the apology to Adelson broadcast by the channel was appropriate and that "no evidence has been presented that there was any intervention by the shareholders of Channel 10 on new content, or even on the text of the apology, which was agreed between the news company and the person injured by the broadcast."

Lauder is married to Jo Carole (Knopf) Lauder. They have two children, Aerin and Jane, and many grandchildren.

Lauder's daughter Jane is married to Kevin Warsh, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

2011: Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy