Liliane Bettencourt

Liliane Henriette Charlotte Bettencourt (née Schueller; 21 October 1922 – 21 September 2017) was a French heiress, socialite and businesswoman.

She was a board member and one of the principal shareholders of L'Oréal.

She was born Liliane Henriette Charlotte Schueller on 21 October 1922 in Paris, the only child of Louise Madeleine Berthe (née Doncieux) and Eugène Schueller, the founder of L'Oréal, one of the world's largest cosmetics and beauty companies.

When Liliane was five years old, her mother died, and she formed a close bond with her father, who later married Liliane's British governess.

At the age of 15, she joined her father's company as an apprentice, mixing cosmetics and labelling bottles of shampoo.

Mr. Bettencourt had been a member of La Cagoule, a violent French fascist pro-Nazi group that Liliane's father, a Nazi sympathizer, had funded and supported in the 1930s and whose members were arrested in 1937.

After the war, her husband, like other members of La Cagoule, was given refuge at L'Oréal despite his politically inconvenient past.

In 1950, she married French politician André Bettencourt, who served as a cabinet minister in French governments of the 1960s and 1970s and rose to become deputy chairman of L'Oréal.

Eventually, the Bettencourts settled in an Art Moderne mansion built in 1951 on rue de Delabordère in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

They had one daughter, Françoise, who was born in 1953.

In 1957, Bettencourt inherited the L'Oréal fortune when her father died, becoming the principal shareholder.

In 1963, the company went public, although Bettencourt continued to own a majority stake.

In 1974, in fear that the company would be nationalised after the French elections, she exchanged almost half of her stake for a three percent (3%) stake in Nestlé

S.A.

In 1987, Bettencourt, together with her husband and daughter, founded the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation (la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller) to support and develop medical, cultural and humanitarian projects.

The foundation is based in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

The foundation, which benefits from assets of €150 million and an annual budget of approx €15 million devotes approximately 55% of its funds to scientific education and research, 33% to humanitarian and social projects and 12% to culture and arts.

By most accounts Bettencourt met François-Marie Banier, a French writer, artist and celebrity photographer, in 1987 when he was commissioned to photograph her for the French magazine Egoïste.

Over the ensuing years, Banier and Bettencourt became friends and she became his benefactor, bestowing gifts upon him estimated to be worth as much as €1.3 billion.

These gifts include, amongst other things, a life insurance policy worth €253 million in 2003, another life insurance policy worth €262 million in 2006, 11 works of art in 2001 valued at €20 million, including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Delaunay and Léger, a photograph by surrealist Man Ray, and cash.

The life insurance policies were allegedly signed over to Banier after Bettencourt was recovering from two hospital stays in 2003 and 2006.

From 2007, she faced intense media scrutiny and publicity over her relationship with François-Marie Banier, the estrangement with her daughter Françoise and her alleged funding of conservative French politicians, including former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Conversely, in 2007 Bettencourt was jointly "awarded" a Black Planet Award, an award given for destroying the planet, along with Peter Brabeck-Letmathe for proliferating contaminated baby food, monopolising water resources, and tolerating child labour.

Bettencourt had an art collection that was said to include Matisse, Picasso, Fernand Léger, Derain, Soutine, Mondrian and Ruhlmann furniture.

In December 2007, just a month after the death of her father, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers lodged a criminal complaint against Banier, accusing him of abus de faiblesse (or the exploitation of a physical or psychological weakness for personal gain) over Bettencourt.

In 2008, the foundation helped fund the new Monet wing at the Musée Marmottan Monet.

As a result of her complaint, the Brigade Financière, the financial investigative arm of the French national police, opened an investigation and, after interviewing members of Bettencourt's staff, determined to present the case to a court in Nanterre for trial in September 2009.

In December 2009, the court delayed ruling on the case until April 2010 (later extended until July 2010) pending the results of a medical examination of Bettencourt's mental state.

However, Bettencourt refused to submit to these examinations.

As of December 2012, Bettencourt owned 185,661,879 (30.5%) of the outstanding shares of L'Oréal, of which 76,441,389 (12.56%) shares were effectively held in trust (for her daughter).

The remainder were owned as follows: 178,381,021 (29.78%) shares owned by Nestlé, 229,933,941 (37.76%) shares were publicly held, and the remainder were held as treasury stock or in the company savings plan.

The Bettencourt family and Nestlé acted in concert pursuant to a shareholders' agreement.

Bettencourt ended her board director tenure on 13 February 2012 and her grandson, Jean-Victor, was appointed as board director.

Bettencourt's daughter and her daughter's husband (Jean-Pierre Meyers) are also members of the board of directors.

Bettencourt generally shunned media attention and granted few interviews.

In August 2012, she sold her private island, D'Arros Island, to a Seychelles-registered conservation business linked to the Swiss Save our Seas Foundation, for £60 million.

In April 2013, Forbes magazine listed Liliane Bettencourt as the world's richest woman in 1999 at a value of $30 billion.

At the time of her death, she was the richest woman, and the 14th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$44.3 billion.

Bettencourt died on 21 September 2017.

The funeral service was held at Église Saint-Pierre in Neuilly-sur-Seine.