Leslie Wexner

Leslie Wexner did not found Victoria's Secret; he bought it. In 1982 the Ohio retailer, already running The Limited, paid Roy Raymond $1 million plus undisclosed stock for a small San Francisco-area lingerie chain, repositioned it toward women buying for themselves, and over the next four decades made it the largest lingerie retailer in the United States.

The Limited, 1963

Wexner was born on September 8, 1937, in Dayton, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio State University in 1959 with a business degree. In 1963 his aunt lent him $5,000, which he matched with a bank loan to open The Limited in the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, a Columbus suburb, on August 10 of that year. The company went public in 1969 and had 100 stores by 1976.

Buying Victoria's Secret

Roy Raymond and his wife Gaye had opened the first Victoria's Secret at Stanford Shopping Center in 1977, a store designed to make men comfortable buying lingerie. In 1982 Wexner bought the five-store business for $1 million and stock, the same year he paid $105 million for the plus-size chain Lane Bryant.

The change he made was one of audience. Victoria's Secret was redirected at women shopping for themselves, sold through malls and through a catalog that by its peak was mailed out by the hundreds of millions each year.

The show and the Angels

When Sara Lee's Wonderbra arrived in the US in 1994, the company answered with television advertising. The same year Wexner discussed a company fashion event with his marketing chief Ed Razek. The first Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was staged in New York in 1995; the Angels name followed in a 1997 commercial with supermodels. By 1998 Victoria's Secret held about 14 percent of the intimate apparel market.

L Brands

Over time Wexner assembled L Brands, a group that at various points held Victoria's Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, La Senza and Lane Bryant, and spun off Abercrombie & Fitch, Express and others. In 2012 CNN Money described him as the longest-serving CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Decline, Epstein and the exit

The model began to falter in the 2010s. The print catalog was dropped in 2016, and Victoria's Secret CEO Jan Singer resigned in late 2018 amid falling sales.

Wexner's long association with Jeffrey Epstein became part of the company's story. In the mid-1990s several L Brands executives raised concerns that Epstein was presenting himself as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret models. In 2019 Wexner said Epstein had misappropriated vast sums from him and his family. On February 1, 2020, the New York Times published an investigation into a culture of misogyny at Victoria's Secret, focused on Razek.

That month L Brands announced a sale of Victoria's Secret to the private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $525 million, with L Brands keeping a 45 percent stake, and Wexner said he would step down as chief executive to become chair emeritus. In July 2021 L Brands agreed to a $90 million settlement of shareholder derivative suits that had accused the board of tolerating a culture of harassment. On August 3, 2021, Victoria's Secret was spun off as an independent listed company, Victoria's Secret & Co., and L Brands became Bath & Body Works, Inc., where Wexner holds the title of co-founder and chair emeritus.

Last updated October 7, 2026