Leonardo Del Vecchio, founder of Luxottica, has died

Leonardo Del Vecchio, founder of Luxottica, has died. The entrepreneur was 87 and passed away at the San Raffaele Hospital where he was being treated.

The current president of EssilorLuxottica was born in Milan in 1935 to emigrants from Puglia, orphaned by his father since birth, at the age of 7 Del Vecchio was entrusted to the Martinitt institute by his mother.

After his first experiences in the factory, in 1961 he moved to Agordo (Belluno), where he founded Luxottica, initially a third-party laboratory for eyeglass parts, which became, since 2018, after the merger with the French Essilor, the world's largest producer and seller of lenses and eyeglasses. The holding company now has around 80 thousand employees and over 9 thousand points of sale worldwide.

In 1986, Del Vecchio was appointed Knight of the Order of Merit for Labor. In 1995, he received an honorary degree in Business Economics from Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

In 1999 he received an honorary Master in International Business from the MIB – Management School of Trieste, and in 2002 an honorary Degree in Management Engineering from the University of Udine. In March 2006, Leonardo Del Vecchio received another honorary Degree in Materials Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan. In December 2012, the CUOA Foundation awarded him an honorary Master in Business Administration.

In 2017, he established the Leonardo Del Vecchio Foundation to support charitable and non-profit initiatives.