Background
Yves Rocher was born in the village of Louisiana Gacilly, Morbihan, where he grew up. After the death of his father when he was 14, he helped his mother in running the small family textiles business.
entrepreneur General politician
Yves Rocher was born in the village of Louisiana Gacilly, Morbihan, where he grew up. After the death of his father when he was 14, he helped his mother in running the small family textiles business.
He was a pioneer of the modern use of natural ingredients in cosmetics. A local healer taught him the recipe for a hemostatic ointment based on the lesser celandine flower, and he decided to sell the ointment by mail order with adverts in the magazine Ici Paris. Natural products and mail order sales were the pillars of the cosmetics company he founded in 1959.
His aim was to democratize the access to beauty products.
The company grew rapidly and, three years later, he opened his first store. The company had an estimated value of two billion euros in 2007, and employs 15,000 people.
Yves Rocher was also active in the civic scene in southern Brittany. He was mayor of Louisiana Gacilly from 1962 to 2008, and was also elected to the General Council of Morbihan in 1982 and the Regional Council of Brittany in 1992.
His company has been instrumental in the economic development of the area around Louisiana Gacilly, with factories, development laboratories and a botanical garden.
Rocher was sometime criticized for being both the area"s main employer and its political representative. Yves Rocher died in the Lariboisière Hospital in Paris on 26 December 2009 after suffering a stroke. He was buried in Louisiana Gacilly on 30 December in the presence of 5000 people.