Amorepacific

The business grew out of a small home enterprise. In the 1930s, Madame Dokjeong Yun began selling camellia oil in the village of Kaesong. Her second son, Sungwhan Suh, took over the operation in 1945 and built it into a cosmetics firm, naming it "Taepyeongyang" — Korean for Pacific Ocean [1].

Sungwhan Suh handed control to his son Kyungbae Suh in 1997. Under the younger Suh, the company reorganised around a multi-brand strategy aimed at global markets and expanded into the group of cosmetics brands it manages today. In 2000 it established the Korea Breast Cancer Foundation, and in 2002 the firm was renamed Amorepacific. Four years later, in 2006, the holding company Amorepacific Group was founded [1].

The company built a second research-and-development centre in 2010, and Forbes named Amorepacific one of the most innovative companies in the world [1]. In 2018 it opened a new global headquarters in Yongsan, on the same site where the foundation of the business had been laid in 1965. In 2025 the holding company was renamed Amorepacific Holdings; the same year, marking its 80th anniversary, the group set out a mid-to-long-term vision for 2035 under the slogan "Create New Beauty".

Amorepacific's portfolio spans skincare, makeup, haircare and personal care. Among its best-known beauty brands are the heritage skincare label Sulwhasoo, the hydration-focused Laneige, the natural-positioned Innisfree, the makeup brand Etude — established in 1990 — and Mamonde. The group also owns HERA and IOPE in prestige skincare and makeup, the haircare brand RYO, the professional salon line AMOS PROFESSIONAL, the dermocosmetic brand AESTURA, and the colour-cosmetics label espoir. Its wider stable, listed by Wikipedia, includes further personal-care and wellness names such as Hanyul, Primera, Illiyoon, Mise-en-Scène, Happy Bath, Osulloc and Vital Beautie [1].

More recently the group added two international skincare brands: the American label Tata Harper and the Korean brand COSRX, both acquired outright over the past several years.

Amorepacific's corporate structure was reshaped in 2006, when the holding company Amorepacific Group was created as a spin-off from the operating company; it was renamed Amorepacific Holdings in 2025 [1].

In 2022 the group moved into the American and European markets by acquiring Tata Harper, a United States skincare brand that PR Newswire described as a luxury clean-beauty label. The deal was announced on 1 September 2022 and closed early in the fourth quarter of that year [4].

The group built its position in COSRX in stages. It took an initial 38.4% stake in the K-beauty skincare brand in 2021, then raised its holding to roughly 93% in 2024, consolidating COSRX as a subsidiary [5][6].

Amorepacific is a publicly listed company, trading on the Korea Exchange under the ticker 090430 [2]. It sits within a group structure headed by the holding company Amorepacific Holdings, renamed from Amorepacific Group in 2025. The founding Suh family has retained a central management role across the company's history, with Kyungbae Suh — son of the postwar founder Sungwhan Suh — leading the firm from 1997.