Melanie Bender: Founder and CEO of Lore
Second Life
Who What Wear
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melanie Bender is the founder and CEO of Lore, a new fragrance brand that creates entire worlds in every bottle. Before becoming a leader in the beauty industry, Bender initially thought she’d enter the world of STEM. In college, she studied aerospace engineering and environmental science before becoming an environmental planner in her home state of Hawai’i. But her love for fashion and beauty led her to New York. It was there that she started a career that would make her an expert in every part of the process of brand-building—from PR to product development to marketing. Her natural talent and reputation led her to help grow beauty brands Versed and Merit before she was tapped to serve as the CEO of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode. But she never abandoned what she learned when she studied STEM. She often credits the scientific method as the formula to entrepreneurial success that’s gotten her to where she is today. Now, after more than a decade of building businesses across the beauty industry and leading them to new heights, Melanie’s launched her own with Lore—her fragrance line that debuted at Sephora this year.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. I'm Hillary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who What |
| 0:10.1 | Where, and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly inspiring careers. |
| 0:17.2 | We're talking about their work journeys, what they've learned from the process of setting aside |
| 0:21.8 | their doubts or fears, and what happens when they embark on their second life. |
| 0:27.0 | Today on the show, I'm speaking with Melanie Bender, the founder and CEO of Lour, an up-and-coming |
| 0:33.4 | fragrance brand that aims to create entire worlds through scent. If you don't know Melanie's name, |
| 0:39.7 | you certainly know the companies that she's helped build behind the scenes. Most recently, |
| 0:44.8 | she served as the CEO of Road Skin by Haley Bieber, where she guided the brand through enormous |
| 0:50.3 | growth and expansion into several global markets. Before that, she actually served as |
| 0:56.5 | the VP of Marketing and Brand Development at Who What Wears Parent Company, Click, before her role |
| 1:02.8 | quickly expanded to work on beauty properties first and merit. But before becoming a beauty brand hitmaker, |
| 1:10.5 | Melanie was a STEM girl. She grew up on Oahu and studied aerospace engineering in college before switching majors to environmental science, and her first job was as a sustainability consultant. After moving to New York, she followed her love of fashion and beauty and made a hard pivot into marketing and PR. |
| 1:30.3 | She quickly developed a reputation as someone you wanted on your team to help build the next big thing. |
| 1:37.1 | Everywhere she went, she applied her engineering mindset to brand building, and it paid off in spades. |
| 1:44.0 | Now, after years of setting other companies |
| 1:46.4 | up for success, Melanie's building something of her own with lore. The brand dropped its first set |
| 1:52.5 | of fragrances with Sephora in September. I loved getting to catch up with Melanie and hear |
| 1:58.0 | about her journey to becoming a founder. Now, on Second Life, it's Melanie Bender. |
| 2:05.9 | Melanie, I'm so excited. Are you ready to start? I'm ready. Okay, so we always start this podcast |
| 2:11.9 | at the beginning. So what did you study in school? And much more importantly, Melanie, what did you want to be when you grew up? |
| 2:20.1 | The first question is the easier one. I went through three majors, I guess, first of which was aerospace engineering, and then geology and geophysics. And I graduated with a degree in global environmental science. What I wanted to do when I grew up |
| 2:36.3 | is a much bigger and less clear question, which you could probably tell for the trajectory of my |
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