
New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Sauro, Bill, photographer. · Public domain
Estée Lauder
1908 – 2004aged 95
Born Josephine Esther Mentzer above her father's hardware shop in Queens, she began by selling face creams her uncle formulated and insisted on demonstrating them on customers' skin herself. Time later named her the only woman among its twenty most influential business geniuses of the twentieth century.