William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme

Life & Legacy

William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (; 19 September 1851 – 7 May 1925) was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician. Educated at a small private school until the age of nine, then at church schools, he joined his father's wholesale grocery business in Bolton at the age of fifteen. Following an apprenticeship and a series of appointments in the family business, which he successfully expanded, he began manufacturing Sunlight Soap, building a substantial business empire with many well-known brands such as Lux and Lifebuoy. In 1886, together with his brother, James, he established Lever Brothers, which was one of the first companies to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, and which is now part of the British multinational Unilever. In politics, Lever briefly sat as a Liberal MP for Wirral and later, as Lord Leverhulme, in the House of Lords as a peer. He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever's product line. His firm had become associated with activities in the Belgian Congo by 1911.
A patron of the arts, Lever began collecting artworks in 1893 when he bought a painting by Edmund Leighton. Lever's rival in the soap industry, A & F Pears, had taken the lead in using art for marketing by buying paintings such as Bubbles by John Everett Millais to promote its products. Lever's response was to acquire similarly illustrative works, and he later bought The New Frock by William Powell Frith to promote the Sunlight soap brand. In 1922 he founded the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Cheshire which he dedicated to his late wife Elizabeth.