Her career was one of highs and super-highs although her name rarely cropped up during regular Tata group conversations. Simone Tata, credited for her role in building the cosmetics brand Lakmé and later founding the retail chain Trent Ltd, passed away on December 5.
Simone, the mother of Tata Trusts chairman Noel Tata and the stepmother of late Ratan Tata, was an incredibly important figure in the world of beauty, fashion and retail. Many of today’s celebrated beauty entrepreneurs and designers will look back on her as a hero because she embodied that moment in the 1960s and 70s when Indian fashion was not even a speck on the global map and it was largely thanks to her that India became such an inexorable force.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder & executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd, rued on X that her ‘Shero’ was no more. “Simone Tata was the doyen of women business leaders. I hugely admired her acumen and courage to pioneer Lakmé as a cosmetic era in India.”
Her silvery, coiffed bob, her signature red nails are part of fashion folklore. “For me, Mrs T has been an endless chapter on character and style,” wrote designer Ritu Nanda in an August 2024 piece for Architectural Digest. Nanda had known Simone closely since the time she joined Trent Ltd in 2001 as merchandise consultant for the home interiors division of Westside. Simone was also someone who would take it upon herself to supervise key projects even when it was easier to delegate, Nanda wrote.
Crown Jewel
Lakmé, Simone’s crown jewel, was established by the Tata Group in 1952 after India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru urged the company to build an Indian makeup brand so that women would not rely on Western cosmetics. “She made her company what it became, so attractive that Hindustan Lever acquired Lakmé. And then, the entrepreneur that she inherently was, she launched a start-up, Westside,” says R Gopalakrishnan, a former director of Tata Sons and vice-chairman of Hindustan Unilever, who is currently serving as an independent director for various companies.
Entrepreneurial Act
In 1996, the Tata Group sold Lakmé to Hindustan Unilever as part of a restructuring exercise. Simone used the sale proceeds to establish Westside, which went on to become one of India’s most popular department store chains in the country. “Within 20 years, she guided her team to make Westside among the most valuable retail companies in the country,” Gopalakrishnan adds.
That’s a remarkable achievement given that she cut her teeth in a vastly different era — before the internet and the rise of mass consumption, fast fashion and, crucially, social media.
Born Simone Naval Dunoyer in Geneva, Switzerland, she first came to India as a tourist in 1953. Two years later, in 1955, she married Naval H. Tata and soon after began her professional association with the Tata Group in the early 1960s. Her formal engagement with the group started in 1961, when she joined the board of Lakmé, then a small subsidiary of Tata Oil Mills Company (TOMCO), known for personal care brands such as Hamam, Okay and Modi Soaps.
She took the reins as Managing Director in 1961 and became Chairperson in 1982. She led Trent until 2006, shaping India’s beauty and retail industries over four decades. “Imagine a European woman stepping into the chaos, colour, and complexity of India in the 60s. Absorbing its rhythm, its contradictions, its potential. In 2025, it’s still a huge challenge for many of us to navigate these complexities. But, she didn’t just adapt to India. She decided to belong,” says The Equal Agency Founder Mitali Srivastava Hough, who has worked on Lakme brands, and also helped launch Trent’s Zudio.
After her retirement in 2006, Simone made very few public appearances. She was last seen in October 2024 at the funeral of Ratan Tata.
