Evelyn Lauder, the daughter-in-law of cosmetics giant Estee Lauder and a major figure in the fight against breast cancer, died on Saturday, Nov. 12 at her home in Manhattan.  She was 75. The cause was ovarian cancer.

Evelyn Lauder

Born in Vienna in 1936, Lauder and her family fled Austria for England when she was two years old.  They arrived in America in 1940, settling on New York’s Upper West Side. Lauder met Estee Lauder’s elder son, Leonard Lauder, while a student at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and married him in 1959. At the time, the Estee Lauder Company was a small, family-owned enterprise.
Lauder worked for the family business for more than half a century, most recently as senior corporate vice president. She is credited with coming up with the name of the company’s Clinique brand in the 1960s.
Lauder was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989.  In 1992, she founded the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and was instrumental, along with Self magazine editor Alexandra Penney, in developing and disseminating the universal pink ribbon symbol for breast cancer awareness. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007.
“All across the breast cancer world, we are feeling the loss of Evelyn,” said Rochelle Shoretz, founder and executive director of Sharsheret, an organization that provides young Jewish women with breast cancer with support and resources. Though Sharsheret was not a direct beneficiary of Lauder’s breast cancer philanthropy, Shoretz said “There is not a woman who has faced breast cancer or will face it who has not been impacted by her work.”
In addition to her husband, Lauder is survived by two sons: William and Gary.