Eugène Schueller established L'Oréal in Paris in 1909.
Schueller was a young French chemist who developed a synthetic hair-dye formula called Auréale. He founded the company under the name Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux, meaning French Society of Inoffensive Hair Dyes. The business later adopted the shorter name L'Oréal.
The company initially focused on professional hairdressers and hair-color products. It expanded through research, acquisitions, and marketing into skin care, makeup, fragrance, and other beauty categories. L'Oréal's long-term growth illustrates how a narrowly focused technical product can become the foundation of a diversified consumer-goods group.
A common confusion is treating L'Oréal as a brand created much later by a large corporation. Its roots reach back to Schueller's independent hair-dye enterprise in 1909. The company's name is often written with an apostrophe and accent: L'Oréal.