Beauty has long been a science-based business. Chemists and formulation scientists have been central to products for skin, hair and nails. But the role of science in beauty is changing—and with it comes an opportunity to re-examine governance.
Increasingly, products compete on clinical efficacy, advances in skin and hair biology, new delivery systems and ingredients, and technologies that bring beauty closer to fields once more clearly on the medical or pharmaceutical side of the line. Science matters in product differentiation and in substantiating claims that may carry regulatory and legal consequences.
That raises an interesting corporate governance question: Does the beauty company board have the capacity to govern an increasingly science-dependent component of the business? More specifically, as science becomes more important to strategy, does the board have scientific expertise—and the right scientific expertise—to evaluate the opportunities and risks that come with it? I decided to examine the issue.
A Useful, if Imperfect, Comparison
Pharmaceutical companies provide an obvious comparison. Beauty is not pharma: The industries have different economics, regulatory requirements, development timelines and consequences of scientific failure. Beauty companies need not spend the same percentage of revenues on R&D or mirror pharmaceutical governance structures.
But pharmaceutical boards have had decades to grapple with questions increasingly relevant to beauty: How should a board oversee scientific investment, challenge management’s assumptions and evaluate a pipeline or transaction whose value depends substantially on scientific judgments?
Pharma’s answers are not necessarily beauty’s, but they provide a useful point of comparison.
Looking Across the Two Industries
I reviewed public disclosures from 20 large publicly traded beauty and personal-care companies alongside 20 large pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. I considered R&D spending where comparable figures were available, disclosed board-level responsibility for science or R&D, and relevant scientific or pipeline experience among non-executive directors.
I limited the analysis to non-executive directors. The governance question is not whether a company employs scientists, but whether directors charged with overseeing management can understand, interrogate and challenge the scientific judgments presented to them.
Scientific governance also intersects with externally sourced innovation. When a company acquires or licenses science rather than developing it internally, the board may deploy substantial capital based partly on judgments about its quality, validity and commercial potential. Scientific capability can therefore matter to M&A and capital allocation as well as R&D oversight.
The R&D Gap
The difference in R&D spending between the two industries is striking. Among companies for which sufficiently comparable 2025 data could be verified, beauty companies spent an average of approximately 2.6 percent of sales on R&D while the comparable pharmaceutical group averaged approximately 19.8 percent (Table 1).
The point is not that beauty companies should spend anything approaching 20 percent of sales on R&D. The economics differ fundamentally, and higher spending is not inherently better.
The numbers instead show the different places science has historically occupied in the two industries. Even at 2 percent or 3 percent of revenues, however, R&D at a large beauty company is substantial. As scientific innovation becomes more important to differentiation, claims, acquisitions and growth, its governance significance increases even if spending never approaches pharmaceutical levels.
Table 1. R&D Spending as a Percentage of Sales
| Industry | Companies with comparable data | Mean | Median | Range |
| Beauty | 9 | 2.62% | 2.79% | 1.66%–3.68% |
| Pharmaceutical | 8 | 19.79% | 20.03% | 16.62%–24.23% |
Only figures that could be compared reasonably with sales were included; figures were not estimated merely to enlarge either group. Company-level supporting data are available from the author.
Science in the Pharma Boardroom
The governance comparison was at least as interesting as the spending comparison. Across the pharmaceutical companies examined, science is frequently institutionalized at board level. Many have dedicated Science, Science & Technology, Research, Scientific or R&D committees. Others explicitly assign oversight of R&D strategy and the pipeline to the full board.
There is no single model: Some rely on specialized committees, others on the full board and some on both. What is striking is not structural uniformity, but the consistency with which scientific capability appears in governance architecture.
Pharmaceutical boards also commonly include non-executive directors with medical or scientific training and experience in drug development, R&D portfolios or pipelines. Counting scientifically experienced executives would tell us little about the capability of directors responsible for overseeing them.
A More Varied Picture in Beauty
Beauty presents a considerably more heterogeneous picture. There are meaningful examples of companies that have brought science and innovation explicitly into board governance. Procter & Gamble has an Innovation & Technology Committee. Beiersdorf’s Supervisory Board competency framework explicitly includes R&D and innovation, and the Supervisory Board has engaged directly with the company’s R&D organization. Other beauty companies have non-executive directors with substantial scientific, pharmaceutical or regulatory backgrounds.
This is not a story in which pharma gets it right and beauty does not. Across the beauty companies examined, however, scientific expertise and explicit science-related governance mechanisms were considerably less consistent.
That suggests an important distinction: Beauty expertise is not necessarily beauty-science expertise. Experience building brands, running consumer businesses and allocating capital is enormously valuable. But it differs from developing a molecule, evaluating clinical evidence, assessing a biological mechanism or managing an R&D portfolio. As beauty becomes more scientifically sophisticated, both kinds of expertise will matter.
Tremendous Science
Board composition alone can also mislead. Many beauty companies have formidable scientific organizations, substantial research facilities, university collaborations, clinical programs and outside advisers.
Estée Lauder is a useful illustration. The company has a substantial global research and innovation organization with sophisticated capabilities in skin biology, formulation, clinical research and related areas. Yet its publicly disclosed board composition does not obviously replicate that scientific depth among non-executive directors. That does not mean the board is failing to oversee science. A board without a scientist could conceivably govern science very effectively if it receives the right information from management, hears directly from R&D leadership, uses outside advisers when appropriate, conducts scientific deep dives and has directors capable of asking the right questions. Conversely, adding an MD or PhD to a board does not by itself create effective scientific governance.
Public filings reveal who directors are and what committees formally oversee, but not the quality of discussion inside the boardroom. The question is not simply, “Who is sitting at the table?” It is also, “What information reaches the table, and what happens to it when it gets there?”
Oversight of Science You Buy
The governance challenge extends to innovation acquired from outside. When a transaction involves a brand or distribution capability, familiar questions of strategy, valuation and integration predominate. When value rests on a technology, ingredient, biological mechanism or clinical evidence, another set of questions enters the room.
Is the underlying science convincing? How strong is the evidence? Can the technology move successfully from laboratory to products at commercial scale? Are proposed claims supportable? What scientific or regulatory assumptions underlie the valuation? Those are not purely financial questions.
Pharmaceutical boards confront this routinely because externally developed technologies are integral to the industry’s business model. Beauty companies need not adopt pharma’s processes, but they do need sufficient capability to understand scientific assumptions embedded in transactions.
A board may be exceptionally capable at evaluating M&A economics while needing additional resources to interrogate the science on which those economics depend. Those resources may include management, outside advisers and transaction-specific diligence. The governance question is whether the board has enough capability—and sufficiently independent information—to know when the scientific case deserves further challenge.
The Right Scientific Expertise
As science becomes a more important element of beauty strategy, I think boards should periodically ask whether their governance capabilities have evolved along with the business. The question is not simply, “Do we need a scientist on the board?” A better question is, “What scientific capability does this board need to oversee the strategy management is pursuing?”
The answer will differ by company. A prestige fragrance business, a mass-market hair-care company and one developing biologically active skin technologies do not necessarily need the same expertise. Scientific expertise is not interchangeable across disciplines; it must fit the company’s strategy.
Scientific expertise alone, however, is not enough. Its boardroom value depends on connecting scientific judgment with strategy, capital allocation, risk and commercial execution—understanding not simply the science, but what it means for the business.
Five Questions for Beauty Boards
Rather than prescribe a structure, I suggest five questions for beauty company boards:
1. How important is science to our strategy today, and where is that heading? Consider not simply the R&D budget, but differentiation, efficacy claims, intellectual property, licensing, acquisitions and technologies on which growth may depend.
2. What scientific judgments are embedded in the decisions the board is being asked to make? In approving an R&D strategy, setting pipeline priorities or considering a science-dependent acquisition, the board may implicitly rely on judgments about underlying science, clinical evidence, claims or regulatory risk.
3. Does the board have the right scientific capability to challenge management on those judgments? Relevant scientific expertise depends on the business and the decisions the board is being asked to make. An advanced degree alone is not enough; the expertise has to be relevant to the science on which the company’s strategy, products or investments depend. Nor is the value of that expertise limited to the judgment of an individual director. Having directors with the right scientific expertise can raise the level of peer-to-peer discussion, allowing directors to test assumptions, ask more informed questions of one another and management, and integrate scientific considerations into the board’s broader strategic and financial judgments.
4. How does scientific information reach the board? Does it hear directly from R&D leadership and receive the conclusions and debates of any Scientific Advisory Board? Are directors exposed to laboratories, researchers and technologies? Does the board use outside advisers when appropriate and independently interrogate the assumptions behind what it is told?
5. Is our existing governance structure still the right one? For some companies, the full board may be entirely appropriate. For others, science may fit naturally within an existing innovation or strategy committee. Still others may benefit from a dedicated committee, additional scientific expertise among non-executive directors, or regular access to outside advisers.
The answer need not be the same for every beauty company—or mirror pharma. The board’s job is to choose the structure that suits the company’s evolving needs.
An Evolving Governance Question
Many beauty companies are already sophisticated scientific enterprises, through internal R&D, externally acquired science or both. What appears to be evolving less uniformly is governance of that science at board level.
That is not automatically a governance deficiency; beauty companies have not historically needed pharmaceutical board structures, and many still may not. But businesses change, and governance should change with them. As scientific innovation, clinical efficacy and biologically grounded claims become more important sources of competitive advantage, boards should reconsider whether yesterday’s expertise, information flows and oversight remain appropriate for tomorrow’s business.
