L'Oréal

L'Oréal started as a hair-dye maker, and the founding company's name said so plainly: hair colourants presented as harmless. Hair has stayed close to the centre of the business ever since. Hair colour, styling and care are still counted among the group's main activities, alongside skincare, sun protection, makeup and perfume.

The move beyond hair happened in stages. By the time of the Helena Rubinstein deal in 1984, the group had already taken on the dermatological skincare brand Vichy, the luxury house Lancôme, the consumer brand Garnier and Biotherm. The late 1980s and the 1990s brought La Roche-Posay, Redken, Biolage and Maybelline. The 2000s added Kiehl's, Shu Uemura, Matrix, SkinCeuticals and Pureology, and in 2008 the beauty arm of Yves Saint Laurent.

L'Oréal tells its own story as a single vocation — creating beauty — pursued for more than a century, and it sums up its present-day purpose as "Create the beauty that moves the world" [2]. The group says its aim is to offer everyone, everywhere, what it calls the best of beauty, judged on quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility.

The 21st century has been shaped by a series of large acquisitions. The Body Shop came in 2006 and went again in 2017; YSL Beauté, Essie, NYX, IT Cosmetics, CeraVe and Aesop followed. The most recent milestone is also the largest of these deals by value: on 31 March 2026 L'Oréal completed its purchase of Kering Beauté, bringing the fragrance house Creed and fifty-year licences for Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga into the group.

L'Oréal sorts its brands into four divisions, and the company's own description of them gives the outline of the portfolio. The Consumer Products Division holds L'Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York, NYX Professional Makeup and Essie. The Luxe Division groups Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani and Kiehl's, among others. The Professional Products Division is built around L'Oréal Professionnel, Redken and Kérastase, and the Dermatological Beauty Division brings together La Roche-Posay, Vichy, CeraVe and SkinCeuticals [2].

Beyond those headline names the portfolio runs much wider. It takes in Helena Rubinstein, Biotherm, Carita, Shu Uemura, Mixa and L'Oréal Men Expert; Matrix, Biolage, Pureology, Baxter of California and Color Wow; Mugler, Azzaro and Atelier Cologne; and IT Cosmetics, Medik8, Youth To The People and Gloria Vanderbilt. Among the newer arrivals are Thayers Natural Remedies, a US-based natural skincare brand; Aesop, an Australian luxury brand; and Creed, the high-end fragrance house that came with the Kering transaction.

Not everything under the L'Oréal umbrella is owned outright. Several designer names are handled under licence rather than ownership — Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren fragrances, Cacharel and Guy Laroche among them — and the Kering deal added fifty-year exclusive licences for fragrances and beauty products under the Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga names.

Buying brands is how L'Oréal has built much of its portfolio, and the deals of the past two decades show the scale at which it now works.

The first of the notable modern deals was the controlling stake in Helena Rubinstein in 1984. Two decades later the group bought The Body Shop for £562 million, a 2006 purchase it later unwound by selling the business to Natura in 2017. YSL Beauté followed in 2008 for about $1.8 billion, and Essie in 2010 [3].

The year 2014 brought three deals in one: NYX Cosmetics, Magic Holdings for $840 million, and Carita together with Decléor for €227.5 million. IT Cosmetics came in 2016 for $1.2 billion, and CeraVe — with the AcneFree and Ambi brands — in 2017 for $1.3 billion [3]. In June 2020 L'Oréal signed an agreement to acquire Thayers Natural Remedies, a US-based natural skincare brand [5]. Aesop, the Australian luxury brand, cost $2.53 billion in 2023 [3].

The Kering transaction is the largest of these by value. Announced on 19 October 2025, it covered Creed — which Kering had itself owned only since 2023 — together with fifty-year licences for beauty and fragrance under the Gucci, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta names, for a total of €4 billion [4]. The acquisition of Kering Beauté was completed on 31 March 2026. At completion, L'Oréal described the deal as bringing in the House of Creed together with fifty-year exclusive licences for fragrances and beauty products under the Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga brands [6].

Taken together, the deals reach across the group's categories — consumer makeup with NYX, dermatological skincare with CeraVe, the luxury brand Aesop, high-end fragrance with Creed — and increasingly beyond France, to the United States for Thayers and to Australia for Aesop. The sums involved are large: five of the purchases — YSL Beauté, IT Cosmetics, CeraVe, Aesop and Kering Beauté — each exceeded a billion in dollars or euros.

L'Oréal S.A. is a publicly traded company. Its shares are listed on Euronext Paris under the ticker OR, and the stock is also quoted on OTC Markets as LRLCF [1].

As of 31 December 2023, the Bettencourt family held 34.73% of the shares and Nestlé 20.13%, so that the two together owned roughly 55% of the company [3]. International institutional investors accounted for a further 30.7%, French institutional investors for 6.63%, individual shareholders for 5.92% and employees for 1.89%.