Who

A billionaire heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, Ron Lauder has dabbled in business, politics, diplomacy, philanthropy and art over the past four decades.

Backstory

Lauder's mother was Estée Lauder (née Josephine Esther Mentzer), the Corona, Queens native who started her beauty company from a kitchen sink in 1946. The younger of Estée's two sons—his brother, Leonard, is 11 years his senior—Ron grew up on the Upper East Side and attended Bronx Science before following in Leonard's footsteps and heading to Penn. But unlike Leonard, who would spend his entire career working by his mother's side, Ron's stint at the company only lasted a few years. By the early 1980s, he'd turned to politics, joining the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy. In 1986, he went to Vienna after President Reagan named him U.S. Ambassador to Austria. But just a few months after his arrival, Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim was elected president, and strained relations between the two countries resulted in Lauder's return to the U.S. less than 18 months later.

After briefly considering a run for Senate, Lauder focused his energies on city politics and pursued the Republican mayoral nomination in 1989, spending a then-record $14 million on his campaign before losing to Rudy Giuliani. He later championed an initiative to institute term limits for City Council members, but then moved away from the political spotlight in the 1990s as he focused his attention on various new business ventures, including a chain of TV and radio outlets in Eastern Europe. These days he spends most of his time tending to his priceless collection of art and dispensing cash to various art-related and religious causes.

Keeping score

Lauder is worth $3.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Of note

Lauder has been a prolific collector of Austrian and German paintings and sculptures for decades. (He says he bought his first works by Schiele and Klimt as a teenager.) In 2001, he unveiled the Neue Gallerie, an Annabelle Selldorf-designed boutique museum on Fifth Avenue. As well as showcasing Lauder's own collection, Neue houses Kurt Gutenbrunner's Café Sabarsky, named after Serge Sabarsky, the art dealer who helped Lauder conceive of the museum but died before its completion. Lauder generated a good deal of buzz for Neue Gallerie in 2006 when he acquired Gustave Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I for $135 million, then the highest amount ever paid for a painting; he purchased the work from Maria Altmann, a niece of Bloch-Bauer, whose family lost possession of the painting during World War II and successfully sued the Austrian government to have it returned. A second Lauder-owned museum is in the pipeline: He's planning to turn the townhouse once occupied by his mother on 70th Street between Park and Madison Avenues into a private museum which will display his collection of medieval arms and armor.

Pet causes

Lauder has long been a generous donor to local art institutions—he spent a decade as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art and donated numerous pieces to the institution over the years. He's also directed a good deal of money to various Jewish causes: Through the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, he's built dozens of Jewish schools and synagogues in Eastern Europe and served as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a position he's since turned over to Mort Zuckerman. In 2007, he took over from Edgar Bronfman Sr. as president of the World Jewish Congress, which has been in turmoil following the discovery of financial irregularities and the dismissal of the group's longtime director, Israel Singer.

Campaign trail

Lauder has kept a lower political profile since his run for mayor and his campaign to impose term limits, but he remains a major player behind the scenes. A big donor to the Republican party, Lauder was one of George Pataki's most dedicated patrons, employing Pataki's wife, Libby, as a consultant for years. His ties to the former governor are also believed to have influenced Pataki's decision to award the Freedom Tower commission to Daniel Libeskind, who has been a close friend of Lauder's since the 1960s. More recently, it was suggested that Lauder's sway with Republicans helped earn his son-in-law, Kevin Warsh, an appointment from President Bush to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Family ties

Ron's older brother, Leonard Lauder, is the chairman of Estée Lauder and a major art collector himself: He's been the chairman of the Whitney for more than a decade. Ron's sister-in-law is philanthropist Evelyn Lauder; his nephew is William Lauder, the current CEO of Estée Lauder.

Personal

Ronald and his wife of over 30 years, Jo Carole Lauder, separated in 2006; he's currently involved with Israeli-born art dealer Daniella Luxembourg, who is believed to have been the reason behind the split. Ron and Jo Carole have two daughters: Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, who heads up the company's marketing and branding efforts and is married to Eric Zinterhofer, a partner at Leon Black's Apollo Management; and Jane, a senior vice president at Estée Lauder, who is married to Warsh, who worked at Morgan Stanley before joining the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve. Until the split with his wife, Ron lived at 740 Park. He now divides his time between residences on the Upper East Side, Wainscott, Palm Beach, and London, where Luxembourg spends most of her time.

No joke

Don't get too close to Adele Bloch-Bauer I: Lauder has a license to carry a concealed firearm.