L'Oréal is a French industrial cosmetics group founded in the early twentieth century by Eugène Schueller. He was a young French chemist of Alsatian origin, born on March 20, 1881, in Paris, France. After graduating from the Applied Chemistry Institute in Paris in 1904, he applied to the National Industrial Property Office for a patent on a hair-dyeing process in 1906.
In 1909, the young chemist created an innovative product for masking white hair, and went on to found the French company for harmless hair dyes in Paris. When it was founded, the company was named after a hairdressing brand: l'Auréale. In 1928, the company acquired French Soap Company, better known by its Monsavon brand name.
In 1929, Eugène Schueller created the first fast dye, Imedia, whose success was boosted by the fashion for short hair. Four years later, in 1933, he launched "Dopal" shampoo in hair salons. The following year, the product was renamed "Dop", and distributed to the general public. With the creation of this shampoo, Eugène Schueller revolutionized hair washing, which until then had generally been done with ordinary soap, making it dull and dry. In 1935, faced with the problem of sunburned skin on his sailing yacht, Eugène created "Ambre solaire", an oil that protects against the sun. In 1936, the company became a SARL, and on April 4, 1939, was renamed "L'Oréal", with headquarters in Paris, France. Since its inception, it has focused exclusively on the beauty sector.
Following Eugène Schueller's death in 1957, his only daughter Liliane Bettencourt became heir to L'Oréal, with her husband André Bettencourt taking over as CEO.
Liliane Bettencourt also died in 2017, making her only daughter Françoise Bettencourt Meyers the principal heiress of L'Oréal to this day.
Its shares have been listed on the Paris stock exchange since October 8, 1963, and are included in the calculation of the "CAC 40" index. Today, L'Oréal is the world's leading cosmetics company, present in 150 countries around the globe, with 85,400 employees and sales of 41.2 billion euros in 2023.
How did this company achieve its position as the world's number one cosmetics company? To answer this question, we need to look at L'Oréal's evolutionary path, based on its major acquisitions.