Lindsay Owen-Jones was born in Wallasey, UK, on March 17, 1946, to a Welsh family, and is the current chief executive of the cosmetics manufacturer L'Oréal.

Studying literature at Oxford and management at Insead, he got his first job as a sales representative at L'Oréal in 1969, selling Dop shampoo in Normandy. He steadily rose in the company until in 1988 He was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of L'Oréal, at age 42. Under his tenure, L'Oreál has widened its market massively; turning it from an almost entirely Europe-based organization and beginning to sell its huge product range as far away as China. This growth was apparently not affected or slowed by the scandal surrounding the Nazi collaboration of L'Oréal's founder Eugene Schueller, the CEO of L'Oréal's US division Jacques Correze, and the husband of Schueller's daughter Andre Bettencourt, a history that was widely publicized in the early 1990's.

A board member of Gesparal , BNP Paribas, and Sanofi-Aventis, and also a member of the supervisory board of Air Liquide , Owen-Jones is an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2002, he was named 'Best European Manager' by the Spanish Futuro magazine, and the US magazine Business Week singled him out as one of Europe's 'Business Stars'.

In 2004, Lindsay Owen-Jones was named one of the '25 Most Influential People in Fashion' by Time Magazine.