Liliane Bettencourt
L’oréal heiress and the world’s richest woman whose later life was overshadowed by scandal
LILIANE BETTENCOURT, who has died aged 94, was the world’s richest woman as the heiress to the L’oréal cosmetics empire; in old age, she was at the centre of “L’affaire Bettencourt”, a concatenation of financial scandals and lurid court cases which fascinated the French public for more than a decade.
The Bettencourt fortune has been estimated at up to €35 billion, placing Liliane – the only child of the L’oréal founder Eugène Schueller – at the global pinnacle of female wealth, above Alice Walton of the Wal-mart retailing dynasty in the US, and European contenders such as the BMW heiress Susanne Klatten.
In her heyday, Liliane Bettencourt cut an elegantly imperious figure among France’s social and political elite alongside her husband André Bettencourt, a wartime Resistance hero and former minister in the governments of Pierre Mendès France and Charles de Gaulle. André’s earlier record as a fascist and anti-semite had largely been forgotten (as had that of Liliane’s father) and the Bettencourts were able to enjoy the privacy of their sumptuous houses in Neuilly-sur-seine and at Ploublazlanec on the Brittany coast – as well as holiday homes in Majorca and the Seychelles – untroubled by media intrusion.
But after André’s death in November 2007, Liliane Bettencourt suffered relentless scrutiny of her mental health and financial affairs, as her heirs, confidants and advisers did battle over the disposition of her fortune, which French law dictated should pass largely to her only child, Françoise Bettencourt-meyers. Mother and daughter became estranged to the point that one lawyer in the case spoke of “nuclear war” between them, though they were later at least partially reconciled.
Meanwhile, evidence was produced – much of it in the form of secret recordings made at Neuilly by Liliane Bettencourt’s butler – that appeared to support allegations of tax evasion through Swiss bank accounts and illegal political funding, notably of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign.
A key figure in this unfolding drama was Liliane Bettencourt’s intimate companion François-marie Banier, a photographer 25 years her junior who was famed for his connections to the rich and famous. He befriended her in 1987 when she sat for him for a magazine profile, drew her into his bohemian milieu, escorted her to galleries and theatres, travelled abroad with her, and claimed to be the only person who could make her laugh. Though flamboyantly gay, he was often labelled her “gigolo”.
In return for his attentions, Liliane Bettencourt showered Banier with largesse. She began by giving him a Paris apartment building and in 2001 – according to a criminal case brought by her daughter against him for abus de faiblesse (“abuse of frailty”) – she signed over to Banier €20million worth of artworks from her collection that he had helped her to buy, including works by Picasso, Léger and Matisse, so that they would become his on her death. In the years that followed, she made further gifts in cash and life insurance policies totalling at least €600million, and at one stage she briefly made Banier her sole heir. But he was later removed from her will, and in 2015 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to repay €15million to her family.
In 2010 it also emerged that the butler’s tapes had picked up conversations between Liliane Bettencourt and Eric Woeth, the budget minister in Sarkozy’s government responsible for pursuing tax evaders. Woeth had solicited a job for his wife managing the Bettencourt investment portfolio – and in his capacity as treasurer of Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, he was alleged to have received an envelope containing €150,000 of cash while visiting Liliane Bettencourt. Such envelopes containing sums larger than the legal limit for political donations were said to have been distributed to numerous politicians favoured by Liliane Bettencourt; Sarkozy – who was also mayor of Neuilly – was alleged to have been a regular visitor and recipient.
Sarkozy and Woeth denied wrongdoing, and Woeth was acquitted of criminal charges. But the whiff of scandal hung over Sarkozy as it did over all of Liliane Bettencourt’s circle, not least because the media portrayed Liliane herself as a woman no longer in full command of her faculties but preyed upon by a gallery of greedy suitors, lawyers, bankers and disloyal servants.
As the various court cases proceeded, she resisted medical examinations – but in 2011 a judge ruled that she was suffering from a form of Alzheimer’s disease and could no longer manager her own affairs. She was placed under the protection of her daughter and grandsons – a situation which she had described only a month earlier as “her worst nightmare”, threatening to “go and live abroad” if it came about – and passed her remaining years in quiet seclusion.
Liliane Henriette Charlotte Schueller was born in Paris on October 21 1922, to Eugène Schueller and his wife Louise – who died when Liliane was five, leaving father and daughter to form an exceptionally close bond. Eugène later remarried Liliane’s governess. The son of a German-born Parisian baker, Eugène was a student of chemistry who began to develop hair dyes for a local barber in 1907 and two years later established La Société Française des Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux (the French Safe Hair Dye Company) which in due course became L’oréal.
Cited for bravery as a soldier at the Battle of Verdun, Schueller returned from war to build his fortune selling his products with striking advertising campaigns, reaching out into foreign markets, and buying up other beauty businesses. According to company legend Liliane began working for him at 15, mixing cosmetics and labelling bottles Meanwhile Eugène was also busy in the 1930s bankrolling the violent, Right-wing, anti-communist and anti-semitic Comité Secret d’action Révolutionnaire, known as La Cagoule (‘The Hood’), which was allowed to hold meetings at L’oréal’s headquarters. During the Second World War, Schueller also backed the Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire, a fascist group which supported the Vichy government, and afterwards he escaped prosecution for collaboration with the support of his fellow former Cagoulard André Bettencourt, to whom Liliane was married in 1950.
She assisted her father at L’oréal until his death in 1957; thereafter she remained its largest shareholder, with a holding that eventually settled at around 30 per cent, keeping at bay the possibility of a takeover by Nestlé, the Swiss conglomerate which also held a significant stake; she delegated the running of the business to professional managers such as the Welsh-born (Sir) Lindsay Owen-jones. The Bettencourts preferred to be seen – if they had to be seen at all by the wider public – as members of the Gaullist political establishment and as philanthropists, having created a charitable foundation in 1987 to support scientific research and medical relief.
L’oréal embarked on a long expansion with the launch of Elnett hairspray as a lighter substitute for lacquer (“Goodbye to stiff hair and hello to hair that’s silky soft!”) and the acquisition of upmarket brands such as Lancôme, Garnier and Helena Rubenstein. The group became a giant of global cosmetics – and having floated on the Paris stock exchange in 1963, its shares multiplied in value some 750 times. For many years André Bettencourt represented Liliane Bettencourt as deputy chairman of the company, but when he stood down after revelations of his anti-semitic writings for Nazi propaganda sheets during the war, she joined the board in her own right in 1995.
Besides her exposure in L’affaire Bettencourt, Liliane Bettencourt suffered other misfortunes of the rich. Prone to constant ill health, real or imagined, and bouts of depression, she was said to take as many as 56 pills per day, prescribed by 15 doctors. And she was France’s highestprofile victim of the US fraudster Bernie Madoff, having lost €22million in a fund that had been invested with him.
As to family life, Liliane and André were said to have been unhappy with their daughter Françoise’s decision to marry Jean-pierre Meyers, grandson of a rabbi who died at Auschwitz, and to bring up their grandsons Jean-victor and Nicolas in the Jewish faith. Jean-victor, who was appointed Liliane Bettencourt’s legal guardian, succeeded her on the board of L’oréal in 2012.
Liliane Bettencourt, born October 21 1922, died September 21 2017