Cosmetic queen Estee Lauder, the only woman on Time magazine`s list of 20 most influential business geniuses of the century, died of cardiopulmonary arrest on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. Lauder never disclosed her birth date, but a company spokeswoman said she was 97. Her company placed No. 349 in the 2003 ranking in the Fortune 500 list of the US largest companies, with revenue at $4.744 billion. The company's product lines have included Estee Lauder, Clinique, Aramis, Prescriptives and Origins, selling primarily through department stores — Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Marshall Field, Neiman-Marcus, Harrods in London, Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

Beauty is an attitude," she once said. "There's no secret. Why are all brides beautiful? Because on their wedding day they care about how they look. There are no ugly women — only women who don't care or who don't believe they're attractive."

Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in the working-class Corona section of Queens, she was the daughter of Max and Rose Schotz Mentzer. During the 1930s, she began selling face creams that her uncle John Schotz, a chemist, mixed up in a makeshift laboratory in a stable behind the family house. And she began experimenting with mixes herself. While in her home kitchen, "during every possible spare moment, (I) cooked up little pots of cream for faces. I always felt most alive when I was dabbling in the practice cream," she said.

Estee Lauder became a household name in 1953, when the company debuted Youth Dew, a bath oil and perfume. Over the years she added new lines and new products, fragrances such as White Linen and Cinnabar, the Aramis line of men's toiletries and the Clinique line of fragrance-free, allergy-tested products. Lauder's success lay in her ability to connect with the average American woman, said Eileen Ford, co-founder of Ford Models. "Mrs. Lauder understood all women and what their beauty needs were," Ford said.