Billionaire Bettencourt Meyers to retire from L’Oreal’s board

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, heir to the L’Oreal SA fortune and Europe’s richest woman, will retire from the company’s board later this year in an unexpected move that suggests succession to the next generation is starting to take hold.

Bettencourt Meyers, 71, will hand her role as vice-chairman to her son, Jean-Victor Meyers, 38, who is already a director, as is his younger brother, Nicolas. She will cede her board seat to Alexandre Benais, who heads Tethys Invest, the family’s investment vehicle. 

The changes are set to take effect after a shareholder vote at L’Oreal’s annual general meeting in April, the cosmetics company said in its earnings statement Thursday. The heiress has served on the board for 28 years.

The Bettencourt Meyers family owns a stake of about 35% in L’Oreal, valuing its wealth at about $76 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Shares in L’Oreal have erased about a fifth of their value in the past 12 months amid a demand downturn for cosmetics, particularly in China. In December 2023, Bettencourt Meyers briefly became the first woman in the world to amass a $100 billion fortune, which was a milestone for her and for France’s fashion and cosmetics industries.

Run by executives from outside the family for decades, L’Oreal was founded in 1909 by Bettencourt Meyers’ chemist grandfather, Eugene Schueller, to produce and sell a hair dye he had developed.

Bettencourt Meyers keeps her life private, shunning the glitzy social life sought by many the world’s wealthy. She has written two books — a five-volume study of the Bible and a genealogy of the Greek gods — and is known for playing piano for hours every day.