Bobbi Brown was founded in 1991 and became part of Estée Lauder in 1995. The brand built its reputation on natural beauty and minimalist makeup, marketed as an alternative to heavy cosmetics. It remains positioned as professional and approachable, appealing to consumers drawn to authenticity and simplicity.
Its parent company, Estée Lauder, sells products in mainland China where animal testing may still be legally required, undermining cruelty-free claims across its portfolio. Beyond regulatory issues, Estée Lauder’s chairman Ronald Lauder is president of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that controls 13% of Israeli land and supports illegal settlement expansion and military-linked projects.
Bobbi Brown’s brand image is rooted in clean and understated beauty, but its corporate alignment ties it to animal testing practices and political structures of apartheid and dispossession.
Estée Lauder is rated High Impact because it concentrates cultural and financial power at a global scale while channelling wealth into one of the most entrenched institutions of Israeli apartheid. With Ronald Lauder at the helm of the Jewish National Fund, the company is directly bound to the mechanisms of land confiscation, settlement growth, and military-aligned infrastructure in Palestine.
The impact is structural: dozens of distinct brands—from mass-market staples like Clinique and Rimmel to luxury houses like La Mer and Tom Ford Beauty—all funnel revenue into the same corporate centre. Every purchase strengthens a conglomerate that not only profits from extractive and exploitative supply chains but also invests in political projects sustaining dispossession.
Where other beauty firms may be complicit through regulatory concessions such as animal testing in China, Estée Lauder stands out because its leadership transforms consumer spending into political capital for an apartheid regime. That combination of market dominance and direct political entanglement makes it one of the most urgent boycott targets in the sector.
Makeup:
Huda Beauty
Ilia
Kosas
E.L.F
NARS
Saie
RMS Beauty
Made by Mitchell
Honest Beauty
Juice Beauty
Shiseido
Ayura
Bare Escentuals/Bare Minerals
Skincare:
Skin1004
The Inkey List
LUSH
BYOMA
Odacite
OSEA
Pai Skincare
Tata Harper