📍106-29 Corona Avenue, Corona, Queens, New York, NY 11368, USA
1908 – 1946“I was born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, Queens, New York in 1908, the daughter of Max Mentzer, a Hungarian immigrant hardware store owner, and Rose Schotz Rosenthal, a Czech immigrant. Corona was a working-class neighbourhood of immigrants, and my childhood was immigrant America in its most fundamental form — the determination that the next generation would do better, the pride in small achievements, the work ethic that was not a philosophy but simply what survival required. My uncle John Schotz was a chemist who made beauty creams in the family kitchen, and I began selling his creams as a teenager, eventually developing my own formulations. I started my business with four products, selling them personally to beauty salon clients in New York. The Queens childhood, the immigrant grandmother's kitchen, the uncle's chemistry — these were the improbable origins of the world's most successful beauty company.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Lauder, E. Estée: A Success Story (1985), Random House; Israel, L. Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic (1985), Macmillan; Koehn, N. Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust (2001), Harvard Business School Press