L’Oréal was founded by Eugène Schueller in 1909.
Schueller was a French chemist who entered the beauty business through hair color. After developing an innovative dye formula in 1907, he began producing and selling products directly to Parisian hairdressers rather than relying only on established cosmetic merchants.
On 31 July 1909, he registered the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux, or French Company of Inoffensive Hair Dyes. That enterprise later became L’Oréal. The company therefore began as a specialist hair-dye business, not as the broad skincare, makeup, fragrance, and hair-care group known today.
A frequent mix-up is treating L’Oréal’s modern global identity as evidence that it began with general cosmetics. Its earliest foundation was specifically tied to Schueller’s chemical research and safer hair-color products. The company later expanded into many other areas of beauty.