$10 million new Lauder gift to science center and aquarium is the continuation of the family’s multibillion-dollar philanthropy

The Cox Science Center and Aquarium has received a new $10 million donation made in the name of the Leonard A. Lauder family to support the center’s ongoing campus expansion in West Palm Beach.

The funding will help underwrite the 75,000‑square‑foot Science Pavilion, planned as the architectural and programmatic centerpiece of the expanded campus, which will add major gallery and exhibition space for science and technology programming.

This is the second significant Lauder family commitment to the project, following a previously announced $5 million gift to the Cox Science Center’s capital campaign in 2023, bringing their total support for the expansion effort to at least $15 million.

The Cox Science Center launched its current capital campaign in 2021 with a vision to turn the existing facility into a larger, world‑class destination for STEM education, interactive exhibitions, and marine science.

Plans call for a new Science Pavilion and a dramatically expanded aquarium component, increasing total tank capacity to roughly 130,000 to 250,000 gallons across multiple saltwater and freshwater exhibits and positioning the facility among the largest aquariums in Florida.

The expansion, which began construction in 2024 and is scheduled to be completed around 2027, will add new permanent exhibit halls, a traveling “blockbuster” exhibition space, upgraded STEM classrooms, and enhanced operations facilities while the existing center remains open.

With the latest Lauder contribution and other recent capital commitments, the project’s fundraising is helping propel the campaign to a total estimated in the nine-figure range to serve families, students, and tourists throughout Palm Beach County and beyond.

Beyond Palm Beach, Leonard Lauder built a national and international philanthropic profile spanning art, education, health care, and civic causes.

He was widely recognized for his transformative 2013 gift of 78 Cubist masterpieces, valued at roughly $1 billion, to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a collection that dramatically strengthened the museum’s holdings of early‑20th‑century modernism.

Lauder and his first wife, Evelyn, established the Lauder Foundation in 1987 as a low‑profile but influential grant maker supporting arts and culture, democracy and civic engagement, global development, education, Jewish communal life, and disease research.

In higher education, he made record‑setting contributions to institutions such as Hunter College, where a $52 million gift in 2022—on top of earlier support—established the Evelyn Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program and became the largest donation in the school’s history.

His long‑standing commitment to New York also included leadership support for cultural institutions and urban renewal efforts, including early backing for the revitalization of Central Park and generosity toward museums and city nonprofits, contributions that civic leaders have described as central to the city’s cultural renaissance.

Together with Evelyn Lauder, he also played a key role in cancer philanthropy, helping to establish the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and supporting research and awareness efforts around breast cancer worldwide.

Health research, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, has emerged as one of the defining pillars of Lauder family philanthropy.

Leonard and his brother Ronald S. Lauder co‑founded the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) in 1998 in honor of their mother, Estée Lauder, and other family members who lived with Alzheimer’s, adopting a “venture philanthropy” approach in which any returns from early‑stage investments are recycled into additional research.

In 2023, Leonard and Ronald Lauder, together with third‑generation family members William Lauder, Gary Lauder, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, and Jane Lauder, pledged $200 million to the ADDF, the largest single gift the foundation has received.

The family’s commitment, to be delivered over roughly a decade, is intended to accelerate the discovery and development of drugs to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s, while the Lauders continue to cover the organization’s administrative expenses so that outside donations can flow entirely to scientific grants.

Taken alongside Leonard and Evelyn Lauder’s other medical gifts—including to nursing education, cancer research, and patient care—Alzheimer’s philanthropy underscores a larger family pattern of funding both research pipelines and frontline clinical services.

That strategy reflects the family’s view that philanthropy can de‑risk early science where government or industry might hesitate, in hopes of shortening the timeline to new diagnostics and therapies for an aging global population.

Philanthropy is now a firmly multigenerational enterprise for the Lauder family, whose members occupy leadership roles across a network of foundations and nonprofit boards.

Ronald S. Lauder, who inherited control of the Estée Lauder fortune after Leonard’s death, formally established his own Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in 1987, focusing heavily on Jewish life, education, and cultural preservation in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as broader civic and cultural causes.

Members of the third generation—including William Lauder, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Jane Lauder, and other relatives—have stepped into increasingly visible philanthropic roles, from major commitments in Alzheimer’s research through the ADDF to targeted support for arts, design, and cultural institutions.

The family’s giving collectively spans a wide portfolio: major museums, universities and professional schools, hospitals and research centers, pro-democracy initiatives, Jewish communal organizations, and local institutions in places where the Lauders live and work, such as New York and South Florida.

Within that landscape, the new $10 million gift for the Cox Science Center and Aquarium’s expansion reflects a continuity of values—combining place-based community investment, access to science and education for young people, and the desire to build lasting civic infrastructure that bears the Lauder name while serving the broader public.

As construction progresses toward a 2027 completion, the project will stand as both a regional science landmark and a fresh chapter in the Lauder family’s evolving philanthropic story, extending Leonard Lauder’s legacy through Judy Lauder and their wider family network in Palm Beach County and beyond.