Ronald Lauder
Ronald Steven Lauder 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. Lauder is a longtime Republican Party donor and supporter of Donald Trump. He ran in the Republican primary for mayor of New York City in 1989.
A long-time friend of President Donald Trump, Lauder has been credited with planting the idea of annexing Greenland in Trump's mind.
Early life and education
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.
Career
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. 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 vote to 37,960 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 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 suggested to Donald Trump that the United States purchase Greenland, which was discussed in the White House Situation Room as a trade involving Puerto Rico according to Elizabeth Neumann. Since Ronald Lauder acquired commercial holdings in Greenland, an article in the Guardian concluded in 2026 that Lauder's suggestions to the President may intersect with his own business interests.
Philanthropic and political activities
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.
Art
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 also has the world's largest private collection of medieval and Renaissance armor.
Lauder has been criticized for failure to resolve a case involving the Museum of Modern Art, which in 1997 exhibited some paintings owned by Rudolph Leopold, a Viennese doctor and art collector. An investigative article in The New York Times on December 24, 1997 – "A Singular Passion for Amassing Art, One Way or Another" – outlined a case involving Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele, which was in the MoMA exhibition but was obtained by Leopold soon after the Nazi era. The New York County District Attorney stepped in to help restore the piece to descendants of its original owner, but ownership of the painting is still in contention, nearly ten years later. Lauder has been accused of a failure to act on the case, despite being MoMA chairman at the time.
Lauder is an honorary trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based non-profit with the mission of protecting endangered cultural heritage sites around the world.
In 1987, Lauder established the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, a philanthropic organization that is dedicated to rebuilding Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe. The foundation also supports student exchange programs between New York and various capitals in Central and Eastern Europe.
In 1998, Lauder co-founded the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation with his brother, Leonard A. Lauder. Its mission it to "rapidly accelerate the discovery of drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's disease." Ronald continues as the Foundation's co-chairman.
In 2019, Lauder purchased a majority of the collection of The International Museum of World War II. An agreement to keep the museum open while a new home was found was terminated by Lauder.
In 2020, Lauder gave 91 pieces of arms and armor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 91-object gift is the museum's most significant of arms and armor since 1942. To honor the gift, the museum's entire group of Arms and Armor galleries is now named for Lauder.
President of the World Jewish Congress
Lauder was elected president of the World Jewish Congress on June 10, 2007, following the resignation of Edgar Bronfman, Sr. He beat the South African businessman Mendel Kaplan and Einat Wilf of Israel by a clear margin.President George W. Bush appointed him to serve on the honorary delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.
Lauder condemned the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
Lauder said in July 2025 that he believed the World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks, which resulted in a $1.29 billion settlement in 1998, should be reopened because of allegations Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, concealed documents that would have magnified the number of accounts held in Switzerland for Nazi interests and Holocaust victims. Lauder said he believed the original settlement should have been up to $10 billion higher.
Jewish activism
In July 2009, Bernie Ecclestone faced calls from Lauder to resign as Formula One chief after he had praised Adolf Hitler in a newspaper interview and said that Hitler "got things done". Lauder said someone with Ecclestone's views should not be allowed to run such an important and popular racing series. He urged Formula One teams, drivers, and host countries to suspend their cooperation with him. In reaction, Ecclestone told the news agency Associated Press that "I think the people who are saying that haven't got the power to say these things." Asked if the World Jewish Congress was influential, Ecclestone said: "It's a pity they didn't sort the banks out" and "They have a lot of influence everywhere". After a public outcry, Ecclestone apologized for his remarks and said he had "been an idiot".In December 2009, Lauder protested against the Roman Curia's decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Pope Pius XII, asserting that an eventual beatification would be inopportune until the Holy See's historical archives from the 1939–1945 period were opened.
In 2011, writing in the German newspaper Die Welt, Lauder called for Israel to be admitted into the Western defense alliance NATO: "Israel needs real guarantees for its security. European NATO member states – including Turkey – must admit the state of Israel into the Western alliance," the WJC president wrote. He referred to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and said they were reminders of how "unpredictable" developments in the Middle East were. Israeli NATO membership "would send a strong signal to other countries not to take on Israel", Lauder argued.
Lauder has also been outspoken on anti-Semitism. In an opinion article entitled "Sweden's Shame", he attacked the Swedish government, church officials, and media for "fanning the flames" of hatred against Jews.
In May 2012, Lauder condemned as "despicable" remarks made by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung who had "revived anti-Semitic canards such as Jewish control of the media" and suggested that Israel's Mossad could have been behind the 2011 "massacres in Norway committed by Anders Breivik" in which 77 people died. Lauder declared: "There is a growing tendency to blame the Jews for all evil that happens under the sun. It is a scandal that a leading academic such as Galtung does not shy away from citing notorious forgeries such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support his bigoted arguments."
In August 2012, Lauder criticized Austrian politicians for failing to publicly denounce the leader of the third-largest political party in the country, the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, who had posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page. "Clearly, and not for the first time, the FPÖ leader is trying to whip up anti-Semitic sentiment. His repeated denials are not credible because his words and actions speak for themselves," Ronald Lauder said in a statement, adding: "This scandal shows that anti-Jewish resentment is still widespread, and unscrupulous politicians are allowed to exploit it for electioneering purposes. That is mind-boggling, and it could have negative repercussions for Austrian Jews." The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien banned Lauder for allegedly interfering in its board elections. IKG President Oskar Deutsch alleged that Lauder had offered incentives to members of the IKG to support another candidate. A Lauder spokesman denied the allegations. In January 2013, it was reported that Deutsch and Lauder had resolved their dispute.
Lauder has been strongly critical of business deals by European energy firms with Iran and called for stronger UN sanctions because of Tehran's threat against Israel and its nuclear program. In April 2008, he criticized a visit by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to Tehran where she met with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help a Swiss company secure a multibillion-dollar contract to buy natural gas from Iran. Lauder told a press conference in Bern: "Maybe that money that Switzerland is paying to Iran will some day be used to either buy weapons to kill Israelis, or buy weapons to kill Americans, or buy missiles to be able to deliver nuclear weapons." Lauder also led diplomatic efforts to persuade European businesses to withdraw from Iran. In January 2010, he warmly welcomed the announcement by Siemens CEO Peter Löscher that his company would not seek new business in Iran.
In February 2018, the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that "there were Jewish perpetrators" of the Holocaust, "not only German perpetrators." Lauder condemned Morawiecki's comment as anti-Semitic, saying: "The Polish prime minister has displayed appalling ignorance with his unconscionable claim that so-called 'Jewish perpetrators' were partly responsible for the Nazi German attempt to wipe out European Jewry... this government is going to extreme and unfathomable lengths to exonerate some of their countrymen's own complicity in the murders of their neighbors. This is nothing short of an attempt to falsify history, which is one of the very worst forms of anti-Semitism and Holocaust obfuscation. We demand an immediate retraction and apology from the Polish government for these absurd and offensive remarks."
In 2019, Lauder launched the Antisemitism Accountability Project to fund campaigns fighting federal, state, and local candidates who support or promote antisemitism.
The Washington Examiner reported in October 2023 that Lauder announced he was no longer providing financial resources to the University of Pennsylvania over antisemitism concerns following the terrorist group Hamas attacking Israel.