A billionaire heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, Ron Lauder has dabbled in business, politics, diplomacy, philanthropy and art over the past four decades.

Lauder's mother was Estée Lauder, the Corona, Queens native who started her beauty company from a kitchen sink in 1946. The younger brother of Leonard, Ron grew up on the Upper East Side and attended Bronx Science before following in Leonard's footsteps and heading to Penn. But unlike Leonard, who would spend his entire career working by his mother's side, Ron's stint at the company only lasted a few years. By the early 1980s, he'd turned to politics, joining the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy. In 1986, he went to Vienna after President Reagan named him U.S. Ambassador to Austria. But just a few months after his arrival, Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim was elected president, and strained relations between the two countries resulted in Lauder's return to the U.S. less than 18 months later.

After briefly considering a run for Senate, Lauder focused his energies on city politics and pursued the Republican mayoral nomination in 1989, spending a then-record $14 million on his campaign before losing to Rudy Giuliani. He later championed an initiative to institute term limits for City Council members, but then moved away from the political spotlight in the 1990s as he focused his attention on various new business ventures, including a chain of TV and radio outlets in Eastern Europe. These days he spends most of his time tending to his priceless collection of art and dispensing cash to various art-related and religious causes.

Lauder has been a prolific collector of Austrian and German paintings and sculptures for decades. In 2001, he unveiled the Neue Gallerie, an Annabelle Selldorf-designed boutique museum on Fifth Avenue, which showcases his own collection among others. Lauder has long been a generous donor to other local art institutions—he spent a decade as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art and donated numerous pieces to the institution over the years. He's also directed a good deal of money to various Jewish causes: Through the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, he's built dozens of Jewish schools and synagogues in Eastern Europe and served as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Ronald and his wife of over 30 years, Jo Carole Lauder, separated in 2006; he's been linked to Israeli-born art dealer Daniella Luxembourg, who is believed to have been the reason behind the split. Ron and Jo Carole have two daughters: Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, who heads up Estée Lauder's marketing and branding efforts, and Jane, a senior vice president at the company. [Image via Getty]