By Associated Press
Last updated at 2:13 PM on 14th November 2011
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Evelyn Lauder, who helped create the pink ribbon for cancer awareness, has died aged 75.
Lauder died at her Manhattan, New York home on Saturday from complications of non-genetic ovarian cancer. She had been diagnosed with cancer in 2007.
Lauder worked for more than 50 years for the beauty products giant, Estee Lauder, which was founded by her mother-in-law.
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| Evelyn Lauder, who created the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness with a friend in 1992, has died from complications of non-genetic ovarian cancer |
Most recently, she held the title of senior corporate vice president.
Yet Lauder is best known as a champion of breast cancer research and for her role in creating the pink ribbon campaign.
In 1992, she worked with her friend Alexandra Penney, the former editor-in-chief of Self magazine, to create the campaign for breast cancer awareness.
It started as a small project with Lauder and her husband, Leonard, largely financing the bows given to women at department store makeup counters to remind them about breast exams.
It expanded into fundraising products, congressional designation of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and $330 million in donations — $50 million from Estee Lauder and its partners — to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which Lauder also started.
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| Lauder, pictured in April at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation's Hot Pink Party in New York, is credited with making pink ubiquitous with breast cancer |
She said: ‘There had been no publicity about breast cancer, but a confluence of events — the pink ribbon, the colour, the press, partnering with Elizabeth Hurley, having Estee Lauder as an advertiser in so magazines and persuading so many of my friends who are health and beauty editors to do stories about breast health — got people talking.’
Then, three years after distributing the first pink ribbon, a flight attendant noted it on Lauder's lapel and said: ‘I know that's for breast cancer.’
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| The breast cancer awareness campaign has garnered many celebrity supporters, including Elizabeth Hurley |
‘From there, it became ubiquitous,’ she remembered.
Her other passion was photography, and she was the author of the book In Great Taste: Fresh, Simple Recipes for Eating and Living Well.
Born Evelyn Hausner in 1936 in Vienna, Austria, she fled Nazi-occupied Europe with her parents, and they settled in the U.S. She attended public schools in New York City and Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.
As a college freshman, she met her husband, the elder son of Estee Lauder and whose family owned what was then a small cosmetics company.
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| Lauder worked for 50 years for beauty company Estee Lauder, founded by her mother-in-law. Most recently, she was the senior corporate vice president. |
The young couple married in 1959. Leonard Lauder is now chairman emeritus of the company. Estee Lauder died in 2004 at 97.
Leonard and Evelyn Lauder's son William is executive chairman of Estee Lauder Cos. Another son, Gary, is managing director of Lauder Partners LLC, a technology investment firm.
She is survived by her husband, two sons and five grandchildren.
'My mother carried the torch of our company heritage and the values that were passed to her by my grandmother, Mrs. Estee Lauder,' her son, William Lauder, said in a statement.
'My mother and father were life partners as well as business partners. They nurtured the culture and growth of the Estee Lauder companies, and as we grew, my mother was our creative compass and pillar of strength. Together my family and the company celebrate the beautiful person she was.'
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