William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme

William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (19 September 1851 – 7 May 1925) was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician.

Lever started work at his father's grocery business in Bolton but as a businessman, he is noted for founding the soap and cleaning product firm, Lever Brothers, with his younger brother James in 1885. He began manufacturing Sunlight Soap and built a business empire with many well-known brands, such as Lux and Lifebuoy. In politics, Lever sat as a Liberal MP for Wirral and then as a Peer (as Lord Leverhulme). 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.

Read more about William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme:  Biography, Business, Politics, Legacy, Quotes

Famous quotes containing the words william and/or viscount:

    I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.
    —Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
    Lucius Cary Falkland, 2nd Viscount (1610–1643)