Celebrity News

Exclusive: Billionaire Leonard Lauder calls off his wedding

Billionaire Leonard Lauder was supposed to wed Linda E. Johnson last weekend — but dramatically called it off almost at the last moment, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

The 80-year-old son of Estée Lauder and Johnson, the 55-year-old president and CEO of the Brooklyn Public Library, had planned to marry in front of an intimate group of family and friends in Philadelphia over the weekend.

But Lauder, the chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder Co. who is worth an estimated $8 billion, and Johnson called guests just a few weeks before the big day to say it was being “postponed.”

Despite their decision not to wed, we’re told the pair are still together and are now away, on what would have been their honeymoon, in Sardinia.

A source told us, “They have been telling people the wedding is postponed, but as of now, a new date has not been set.

“Some people assumed that Leonard and Linda had not reached an agreement on a prenup in time for the wedding, but in fact the prenup had already been signed a while ago.

“They have been having a few ups and downs, and perhaps he feels it is ‘too soon’ after Evelyn.”

Leonard lost his beloved wife Evelyn, whom he married in 1959, in November 2011. She has two sons with Leonard, and she worked for more than 50 years for Estée Lauder and helped create the pink ribbon for cancer awareness.

Leonard began publicly dating Johnson in late 2012, and sources tell us that by May the couple was talking about marriage, disappointing many single society ladies who were eyeing him as “New York’s most eligible bachelor.”

The wedding had been planned for Philadelphia because it’s the hometown of Johnson, a lawyer who was president and CEO of the National Constitution Center before joining the library.

Another friend of the couple explained, “They were barreling towards a wedding date that was too ambitious, and they wanted to take a breath. The whole thing was too fast and too breathless.”

Reps for the couple declined to comment.