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Almost four decades ago, fresh out of one of France’s top business schools, Nicolas Hieronimus began his career at L’Oréal as product manager. His daily tasks involved brainstorming names and slogans for shampoos — a far cry from where he stands today, leading the world’s largest beauty conglomerate as global CEO.
Under his leadership, L’Oréal has codified Hieronimus’s personal understanding of beauty as a human need into a strategic doctrine: the “essentiality of beauty”. A direct response to the post-pandemic world, shaped by economic realignment and shifting social values, beauty in this context is reframed not as discretionary luxury, but as a source of stability and resilience.
This perception is reshaping the company’s brand architecture. Products are no longer positioned solely as objects of consumption, but as cultural and emotional touchpoints — vehicles through which consumers engage with identity, community and optimism.
When it comes to the group’s global strategy, Hieronimus aims to build a multi-brand, multi-persona ecosystem that responds to the current diversity among lifestyles and aesthetics. From Lancôme to YSL Beauty, Skinceuticals to Aesop, each portfolio brand embodies a ‘persona’, underpinning L’Oréal’s emotional value and cultural resonance.
It seems to be paying off. As of 31 December 2024, L’Oréal posted 5.1 per cent comparable growth, outperforming the global beauty market and demonstrating resilience in the face of economic turbulence. The group also reported record-high gross and operating margins, with the latter reaching 20 per cent — a 20 basis point increase from the year prior.
In an exclusive interview with Vogue Business in China, Hieronimus offers a window into his distinct leadership style.
Leading or coaching?
As an avid sports enthusiast, Hieronimus draws many of his management lessons from the sporting world. He prefers to eschew traditional management jargon and refer to himself simply as a “coach”. Leading a global company, he believes, is like coaching a top-tier team — the goal is to harness each member’s strengths for maximum collective impact. “You have a great team if you have people that are different,” he notes.
Under his leadership, L’Oréal has prioritised diversity, ensuring a balanced gender and nationality mix on its executive committee — a strategic move that strengthens organisational resilience in a globalised market. This continues to refine the group’s leadership structure, enhancing diversity to ensure a truly global perspective is adopted across all decision-making practices.
For Hieronimus, a CEO’s core responsibility is to build the strongest possible team, unlock human potential and position that team at the right moment within the right cultural context. That context being the current tumultuous geopolitical landscape, in which beauty can offer a tether in 2025. “We are there to create what I call the ‘dopamine effect of beauty’,” he says. “Beauty is an incredible category. It makes people happy even when times are tough.”
His brand mantra — “Create the beauty that moves the world” — feeds into this, by emphasising the emotional and social resonance of the industry. The philosophy drives L’Oréal’s product development and marketing, focusing on emotional psychology and cultural relevance to ultimately strengthen consumer connections and brand loyalty.
Beyond the numbers
In today’s uncertain macroeconomic environment, steering the world’s largest beauty group is no small feat. Trade tensions, geopolitical unrest and fluctuating consumer confidence add to the layers of complexity for multinational corporations to sustain long-term growth. Yet, L’Oréal has managed to not only excel financially, but also keep its focus on broader societal issues and human welfare.
Hieronimus highlights that L’Oréal is one of the rare global companies to balance “non-financial performance with financial growth”. This approach manifests through various initiatives: on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) front, L’Oréal has been committed to sustainability since the launch of its ‘Sharing Beauty with All’ initiative in 2013, which set goals through to 2020. Its latest programme ‘L’Oréal for the Future’ launched in 2020, and seeks to further this mission. Since 2019, L’Oréal China has achieved the adoption of 100 per cent renewable energy use across all of its operational sites, while the group is accelerating the transition to sustainable packaging and formulas across its product range.
The conglomerate also launched its global Share Care programme in 2013, setting minimum standards to ensure better social security for all employees, enhancing their health and work environments.
China as a strategic and emotional hub
Hieronimus views China not only as a business powerhouse, but also a key innovation and strategic centre for the group. He describes the market’s dual importance. “China is very important both to the business and to our heart,” Hieronimus says. “It’s a country where I come both to look at the business, but also to learn.”
Amid China’s slower economic growth, L’Oréal’s strategy aims to hone in on “emotional resonance” by offering high-quality, innovative products while deepening cultural connections with consumers.
L’Oréal has also deepened its engagement with Chinese youth, such as during its recent Magnetism of Beauty music festival, hosted at Fudan University in Shanghai, which blends music and beauty-tech to redefine brand engagement in a language young people understand. The activation seeks to align with L’Oréal’s global youth programme, focusing on creating job, education and growth opportunities for young people post-pandemic.
Hieronimus says: “In this world, when you’re young you want to be empowered to have the possibility to have an impact, and I think creating the beauty that moves the world is the best impact that anyone can have.”
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