L'Oréal S.A.

Eugène Schueller was a young French chemist who developed a synthetic hair dye formula in 1907 and began selling it to Paris hairdressers. He founded the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux — the French Company of Inoffensive Hair Dyes — in 1909, mixing products in his apartment and delivering them himself. Hair colouring had previously been either ineffective or toxic. Schueller's formula was neither. He renamed it L'Auréale, which became L'Oréal.

Eugène Schueller died in 1957, leaving the company to his daughter Liliane Bettencourt. She became the wealthiest woman in the world — at her peak worth approximately $40 billion — and the largest individual shareholder in L'Oréal. The Bettencourt family and Nestlé have been the two anchor shareholders of L'Oréal for decades, creating an unusual ownership structure that has protected the company from hostile takeovers while enabling steady global expansion.

L'Oréal's advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding created the tagline "Because I'm worth it" in 1971 for the Préférence hair colour campaign — one of the first advertising campaigns that spoke to women's self-worth rather than their desire to please men. The line was later changed to "Because you're worth it" to be less self-absorbed. The tagline has been translated into 40 languages and has run continuously for over fifty years, making it one of the longest-running advertising campaigns in history.

L'Oréal became the world's largest beauty company through an aggressive acquisition strategy beginning in the 1960s: Lancôme, Garnier, Maybelline, Ralph Lauren fragrances, Redken, Kiehl's, Urban Decay, IT Cosmetics, and over thirty other brands were absorbed into the L'Oréal portfolio. The strategy was consistent: buy established brands with loyal customers, maintain their identities while improving distribution and manufacturing efficiency, and position them at different price points in the global beauty market.

L'Oréal briefly became the most valuable company in Europe in 2023, with a market capitalisation exceeding €220 billion. The company sells products in over 150 countries, employs 85,000 people, and generates approximately €38 billion in annual revenue across five divisions: luxury, consumer, professional, active cosmetics, and dermatology. The chemist who mixed hair dye in his Paris apartment had founded the largest beauty empire in history.