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American businessman (born 1937)
Leslie Herbert Wexner is an American billionaire businessman and political activist. He is the co-founder and chair emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc. He has been the principal in Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret and La Senza, amongst several other retail corporations.
Wexner was born in Dayton, Ohio, on September 8, 1937, to parents Bella née Cabakoff (1908–2001) and Harry Louis Wexner (1899–1975). Both his parents were of Russian-Jewish origin. His father was born in Russia and his mother was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She moved to Columbus, Ohio, as a toddler. Wexner has a younger sister, Susan. Wexner attended Bexley High School and Ohio State University. In 1953, he won a minor award for his essay, published in the Ohio Jewish Chronicle, titled "Why I Love and Respect Judaism". He initially expressed an interest in architecture, but graduated in 1959 with a major in business administration. While a student at Ohio State University, he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. Wexner served in the Air National Guard. He briefly attended the Moritz College of Law.
In 1989, Wexner and his mother Bella were the first to make a $1 million personal donation to the United Way. Both of their names were inscribed in marble and are on display in the lobby of the United Way Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Wexner was listed by Forbes in 2017, the wealthiest of seven billionaires from Ohio who made the list. He was a major funder of the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University, which is named in honor of his father. Wexner said that because "growing up, my folks moved around a lot, and I never got a good Jewish education", he felt unprepared to take leadership roles in his Orthodox Jewish community. So, in 1985, he joined Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman to establish the Wexner Foundation's first core program, aimed "to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions, and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people."
In a 1985 article, Wexner discussed that he had trouble sleeping which he attributed to his dybbuk spirit that he dubbed "terminal shpilkes" (shpilkes being Yiddish for "pin", as in "on pins and needles"), "the demon that always wakes up in the morning with Wexner and tweaks and pulls at him". He noted it had been intermittently appearing since childhood, and attributed his driving, his bachelor lifestyle and his business drive to trying to escape the anxiety it caused, always having music playing as he could not stand the sound of silence. One girlfriend converted to Judaism and changed her name to "Cohen" after a year of dating Wexner. On January 23, 1993, Wexner married Abigail S. Koppel, an attorney. The couple has four children. Formerly of the Bexley area, Wexner now lives in New Albany, a community northeast of Columbus. He owns a 30-room, $47 million, Georgian-inspired estate, on nearly 336 acres (1.36 km2), that was built in 1990. The estate was, for 20 years, the location of the Annual New Albany Classic Invitational Grand Prix & Family Day (an equestrian show) benefiting The Center for Family Safety and Healing. In February 2018, Abigail Wexner announced the end of the event, citing the growing number of equestrian competitions. Wexner has owned the mid-18th century Foxcote House in Warwickshire, England, since 1997. Wexner was inducted as an honorary member of the 104th Sphinx Senior Class at Ohio State University on May 7, 2010.
Wexner began his retail career working in his parents' clothing store, "Leslie's", which had been named after him. According to Wexner, he began working at his parents' store so they could take a vacation. Wexner analyzed the sales and inventory, identifying the most and least profitable items. When his father refused to adjust the inventory, Wexner decided to open his own store. In 1963, Wexner's aunt lent him $5,000 (equivalent to $53,000 in 2025), which he combined with a matching loan from a bank in order to start The Limited. The store took its name from its focus on moderately priced merchandise, such as skirts, sweaters and shirts, that sold quickly and quickly generated revenue. Wexner opened the first store on August 10, 1963, in the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. One year later, Wexner's parents closed their store and joined their son in running The Limited. He opened the second Limited store in August 1964. He took Limited Brands public in 1969, listed as LTD on the NYSE. A. Alfred Taubman served as a mentor for Wexner, starting in the mid-1960s, and the two partnered on many deals involving Taubman's shopping malls. In 1972, Robert H. Morosky, an active Catholic fund raiser, sold his house and moved into a small apartment in order to buy stock in The Limited and to serve as Vice Chairman of The Limited's board having full confidence and belief in Wexner. Morosky resigned in 1987 and gave a number of interviews decades later criticizing Wexner's closeness with Jeffrey Epstein. Wexner expanded The Limited considerably in the 1970s, having opened the 100th store in 1976. He took on significant debt in 1978 to purchase the importer Mast Industries, which provided him with essential business advantages over competitors. In 1982, Wexner spent $105 million to purchase the much larger Lane Bryant retail chain of plus-sized clothing which came with $30 million in debt and acquired the lingerie business Victoria's Secret from Roy Raymond for an undisclosed amount of stock, and $1 million with Raymond later describing Wexner as "very guarded", stating, "When I met him, it was as if he met the devil." Six months later, when Raymond was facing bankruptcy, he contacted Wexner and offered to sell Victoria's Secret. By 1992, Victoria's Secret was worth an estimated $1 billion, and became known for the use of supermodels featured in an annual fashion show, overseen by Ed Razek. In 1993, Wexner hired Len Schlesinger, a Harvard Business School professor, whom he later appointed as a company director, to advise him. Over the years, Wexner built L Brands, a retailing and marketing conglomerate that included Victoria's Secret, Pink (Victoria's Secret for teens), Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza. Previous brands that were spun off include Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner New York, The Limited Too (now Tween Brands, Inc.), Structure 9, Aura Science, The Limited (wh
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