She learned the machinery of global beauty inside L'Oreal, then went looking for brands worth running. The latest one smells faintly of eucalyptus.
In March 2025, Emily Coleman took the chief executive's chair at (MALIN+GOETZ), the New York apothecary brand that turned cult skincare into a quiet empire of eucalyptus body wash, charcoal soaps, gym deodorant, and candles people gatekeep. It is a brand built on a paradox: minimalist, almost clinical, yet warm enough to be a personality. Running it is less about adding noise and more about protecting a tone of voice.
Coleman arrived not as a beauty romantic but as an operator. For roughly two decades she worked inside L'Oreal, the largest beauty company on earth, learning the parts of the business most consumers never think about - the supply chain, the travel-retail counters in airports, the retail operations, the digital and marketing engines. She did this across four very different markets: Paris, Hong Kong, New York, and California. The through-line she carried out of all of it was a single, slightly contrarian belief: that a great brand should be global and local at the same time.
That belief is exactly the assignment at (MALIN+GOETZ). The brand is unmistakably from one corner of Manhattan - apothecary shelves, simple labels, a refusal to shout. The challenge is to let it travel without sanding off the edges that made it worth carrying home in the first place.
Most people meet a beauty brand at the shelf. Coleman spent two decades behind the shelf. Her L'Oreal tenure read like a tour of the whole apparatus: Digital and Marketing, where the story gets told; Travel Retail and Retail Operations, where the story has to survive an airport at 6 a.m.; and Supply Chain, the unglamorous spine that decides whether the story is even in stock. Few executives can claim fluency in all three. Coleman can.
Her last act at L'Oreal was the loudest. She became Senior Vice President of Urban Decay - the irreverent, color-saturated makeup brand known for its Naked palettes and refusal to behave. Going from the spine of a giant to the front line of a brand with that much attitude is a sharp turn. It is also the moment her resume stopped being about logistics and started being about leadership.
In September 2022, Coleman did something most executives never attempt: she stepped into the chair of a brand still warm from its founder. Chantecaille Beaute, the prestige skincare and makeup house, named her CEO to succeed Sylvie Chantecaille herself. She worked from the New York headquarters and reported up to Patrick Rasquinet, an executive board member at Beiersdorf, the German group that owns the brand.
Taking over a founder-built, founder-named brand is delicate work. You inherit not just a balance sheet but a personality, a set of loyalists, and a legend. Coleman framed her job there in terms of continuation rather than reinvention - the next chapter, not a new book.
Less than three years later, she moved again - this time to (MALIN+GOETZ), another founder-built house, this one created by Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz. The search was run by Melissa Sussberg, a partner at executive recruiter Kirk Palmer Associates. The pattern is hard to miss: Coleman has become a specialist in taking the wheel of brands with strong founder DNA and steering them toward a bigger global audience without crashing the thing that made them special.
It is a narrow, valuable skill. Plenty of operators can grow a brand by changing it. Far fewer can grow one by understanding it.
Coleman built her craft developing global brands with local relevance - the same idea, retuned for wildly different markets. Where she has run the playbook:
Roughly two decades at L'Oreal, moving through Digital & Marketing, Travel Retail, Retail Operations and Supply Chain across Paris, Hong Kong, New York and California.
Rises to Senior Vice President of Urban Decay, the boldest brand in the L'Oreal makeup stable.
Named CEO of Chantecaille Beaute, succeeding founder Sylvie Chantecaille and reporting to Beiersdorf's Patrick Rasquinet.
Appointed Chief Executive Officer of (MALIN+GOETZ), the cult New York apothecary brand. Search led by Kirk Palmer Associates.
A great brand should belong everywhere and still know exactly where it's from.
Her schooling runs from Oxford University to the Fashion Institute of Technology - theory and craft, stitched together.
She has run beauty on three continents, which is why "local relevance" isn't a buzzword to her - it's muscle memory.
She knows the supply chain as well as the marketing. The person selling you the candle once made sure it was on the shelf.
She has now succeeded two founders - Sylvie Chantecaille, then the legacy of Malin and Goetz. A rare specialty.
Her last big L'Oreal post was Urban Decay - proof she can speak loud color as fluently as quiet apothecary.