Lauren Ratner

Ratner is the co-founder people outside the industry tend not to know, and she is the reason Rhode reads as a brand rather than a merchandise line. She grew up in London, studied history at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent her early career in fashion marketing: Michael Kors from 2013, then director of marketing at Reformation from 2016 to 2019, during the years when Reformation was proving that a direct, digital, aesthetically strict brand could build a following without traditional advertising. She co-founded Rhode with Bieber in 2020, two years before the launch, alongside her husband Michael D. Ratner, whose production company OBB Media made content and who chaired the board.

When e.l.f. announced the acquisition, it described Lauren Ratner as having architected the brand. Her title since December 2023 has been president and chief brand officer, and the things that make Rhode distinctive — the small range, the packaging, the pop-ups, the habit of turning a product into an object people photograph — are the decisions of someone who learnt at Reformation that restraint is a brand asset. She stayed in her role after the sale to e.l.f. in 2025.

The honest limit on this profile is that the inside division of labour between Bieber and the Ratners is not public, and I am inferring Ratner's contribution from her career and her title rather than from a record of specific calls. What is clear is that Rhode was built by a small team with a fashion-brand operator at the centre, not by a licensing deal with a famous name, and that difference shows in how few products it launched and how long it waited to sell through anyone else.