Who owns Lush?

Mostly the people who started it. Lush is a private company, and five of the six people it names as its co-founders hold about 69% of the shares between them. Mark and Mo Constantine, the couple at the centre of it, hold 56% on their own. A trust for the staff holds another 10%.

No private equity firm, parent company or stock market investor appears on the shareholder list.

The remaining fifth is the awkward part. It belongs to Andrew Gerrie, a director who left in 2014, and his wife Alison Hawksley. They first gave notice to sell in October 2014. A sale to a stock market company was announced in 2022 and undone in 2024, and the shares are still in their names.

What does the register show?

The company at the top is Lush Cosmetics Limited, company number 04162033, registered at 29 High Street in Poole. It has 9,132 shares, all of one class.

The last full shareholder list was filed with its confirmation statement of 14 April 2025, and the statement of 14 April 2026 reported no changes. It reads:

• Mark Constantine: 3,131 shares, 34.3%
• Mo Constantine, who is Margaret on the register: 2,000 shares, 21.9%
• Andrew Gerrie: 955 shares in his own name and 853 held jointly with Alison Hawksley, 19.8% in all
• The Lush Cosmetics Employee Benefit Trust: 913 shares, 10.0%
• Rowena Bird: 500 shares, 5.5%
• Helen Ambrosen: 500 shares, 5.5%
• Paul Greeves: 200 shares, 2.2%
• Karl Bygrave: 80 shares, 0.9%

The percentages are ours, worked from the share counts and rounded.

The register of persons with significant control has one entry: Mark Constantine, recorded as holding more than a quarter but not more than half of the shares and votes. That fits the list. Nobody owns more than half alone, and the accounts say the directors consider there to be no ultimate controlling party. Between them, though, Mark and Mo Constantine hold 56.2%.

Three more companies matter. Lush Cosmetics Limited owns all of Lush Ltd., company 02940032, which in turn owns 87% of Lush Retail Limited, company 03084750, the business that runs the UK shops and website. The last list of Lush Retail's shareholders, filed in 2015, showed nearly all of the other 13% in Mark Constantine's own name.

The name itself is owned separately. Cosmetic Warriors Limited, company 04165681, owns the Lush brand and licenses it to the group, which paid it about £18 million in royalties in the year to June 2025. It is not part of the Lush group, but its shareholder list matches the one above, with the same people holding the same numbers of shares and a staff trust of its own. So the brand and the shops have the same owners, by two routes.

What does the staff trust own?

Ten per cent, and it got there through new shares, not a sale. On 20 November 2017 the company issued 913 new £1 shares to the Lush Cosmetics Employee Benefit Trust, taking the total from 8,219 to 9,132. Lush describes this as the shareholders giving 10% of the company to the trust. That is a fair summary of the effect, since everyone else's share shrank by a tenth.

The accounts say everyone employed in the group is a beneficiary, about 13,000 people in 27 countries, and that the trust has two trustees appointed by the company, two elected by staff and one independent.

What the trust can do with its shares is narrower than the word ownership suggests. The accounts say the trustees waive any dividend, and abstain from voting unless the company's directors direct them to vote. What staff get, according to Lush, is a say of a different kind: if the shareholders ever decided to sell control to an outside buyer, that would need the consent of a majority of staff, in a vote run by the trustees.

Lush also says the shareholders who work in the business have agreed that when they sell, they will sell to the company or to the trust, and the accounts of the UK shops say a trust holding of 35% is envisaged over time. It has not grown yet. The trust was issued 913 shares in 2017 and held 913 at the last list.

Why does a former director still hold a fifth?

Andrew Gerrie joined the business in August 1994, at first as an investor, and within a few months was working in it full time. That is how the Court of Appeal put it in 2017. Lush's own list of six co-founders does not include him, though his advisers and some newspapers call him one. He was a director of the main companies until December 2014.

The same judgment records that relations between him and Mark Constantine deteriorated in 2014. That October Gerrie and Hawksley gave notice that they wanted to sell their shares. Under the company's rules a seller's shares are offered to the other shareholders first, at a price set by independent accountants if the two sides cannot agree one. They could not agree how the price should be worked out, and the companies took the question to court. The High Court in 2015 and the Court of Appeal in 2017 both found for Gerrie and Hawksley: the shares were to be valued as a straight proportion of the whole company, with no reduction for being a minority holding.

No sale followed. Then, in December 2022, Silverwood Brands, a small company quoted on the Aquis stock exchange of which Gerrie was a director and shareholder, announced that it had bought the stake for £216.8 million, paid for in its own shares. Lush's directors refused to register the transfer. They said it broke the company's rules on several counts, among them that the price had to be paid in cash. Lush went to court in July 2023. That October Silverwood withdrew its request to be registered, and the deal was unwound by the end of April 2024. None of the £216.8 million was cash, and none of it went to Lush.

So the register is where it was. The 1,808 shares are still listed against Gerrie and Hawksley, and no buy-back has been filed. In May 2025 the company adopted new articles of association. They keep the rule that shares are offered to the other shareholders first, and they say the legal and beneficial ownership of a share cannot be transferred separately.

The argument is not over. City AM reported in June 2026 that Gerrie had filed an unfair prejudice petition in 2025, the kind of claim a minority shareholder can bring over how a company is being run, and that a 19-day trial was expected to begin at the end of that month. We found no published judgment and no report of the outcome by 1 October 2026, so we do not know how it ended, or whether it has.

Who runs it?

The Constantines. Mark Constantine is chief executive, and the three directors of the top company are Mark Constantine, Mo Constantine and Karl Bygrave. All three are shareholders.

It is run from the building it started in. Lush says its founders have been at 29 High Street in Poole since 1977, first as a hair and beauty clinic, then as Constantine & Weir, which invented and made products for The Body Shop, then as a mail order business called Cosmetics To Go, which collapsed. Lush came next. The company now called Lush Ltd. was incorporated in June 1994 under another name and renamed in April 1995, which is why you will see both years given as the start.

The BBC reported in December 2025 that two of Mark Constantine's three children work for the company. No other Constantine is on the shareholder list.

How is it doing?

The latest accounts cover the year to 30 June 2025 and were filed in April 2026. Group turnover was £727.1 million, up from £674.5 million. The group made a loss before tax of £6.6 million, against a loss of £42.6 million the year before, and paid no dividend in either year. It employed 13,333 people on average.

At that date there were 869 Lush shops in 50 countries, 665 of them run by the group itself.

The auditor's opinion was not qualified, but it drew attention to a material uncertainty over going concern. Lush borrows each year to build up stock before Christmas, and the facilities for Christmas 2026 had not been formally agreed when the accounts were signed in March 2026. The directors said a £35 million facility from NatWest had credit approval and was waiting on legal documents, that a second, from Wells Fargo, was still to be approved, and that they were confident both would be completed. We have seen nothing published since that says whether they were.

The UK shops, in Lush Retail Limited, turned over £153.4 million and made a profit before tax of £7.4 million, with 2,318 staff on average. The BBC reported 104 Lush shops in the UK and Ireland in September 2025.

Is Lush British?

Yes. It was founded in Poole and is still run from there, the companies at the top are registered in England, and the two people who hold a majority between them are founders who still run it.

Is Lush a franchise?

Not in the UK. The shops here are run by Lush Retail Limited, a group company.

Abroad it is mixed. Of the 869 shops, 204 are not run by group companies. They belong to associates, businesses in which Lush holds a minority stake, and to licensees, in which it holds none. The accounts also mention new franchise locations planned for Italy and France. North America, its largest market, was a joint venture until September 2021, when the group bought out its partners for a total of £116.7 million.

Is Lush independent?

In the everyday sense, yes: nobody outside the business owns it. Not by our verified independent badge, though, which marks a locally and privately owned business rather than a chain. Lush has about a hundred shops in the UK and Ireland, so the one on your high street is a branch.

The useful label is national chain, founder and employee owned. For the same shelf under a different kind of owner, see who owns The Body Shop, which a private equity-led group bought out of administration in 2024.

Questions people ask

Is Lush owned by a bigger company?

No. Every name on the shareholder list is an individual or the staff trust. No company or investment fund appears on it.

Is Lush owned by The Body Shop?

No. The link is older than Lush: before they started it, its founders invented and made products for The Body Shop. Lush itself has never belonged to The Body Shop.

Is Lush employee owned?

Partly. A trust holds 10% of the shares on behalf of everyone who works in the group. The other 90% belongs to individuals, most of it to the founders.

Is Lush on the stock market?

No. It is a private company. A stock market company announced in 2022 that it had bought a 19.8% stake, but the transfer was never registered and the deal was unwound in 2024.

Who founded Lush?

Lush names six co-founders: Mark Constantine, Mo Constantine, Rowena Bird, Helen Ambrosen, Liz Bennett and Paul Greeves. It dates the business to 1995, when the first Lush shop opened in Poole.

Last checked 1 October 2026. This article uses the Companies House records, registers of persons with significant control, officer lists and filing histories for Lush Cosmetics Limited (company 04162033), Lush Ltd. (02940032), Lush Retail Limited (03084750) and Cosmetic Warriors Limited (04165681); the shareholder lists in the confirmation statements of 14 April 2025 (Lush Cosmetics) and 22 February 2025 (Cosmetic Warriors), and the statements of 2026 reporting no changes; the return of allotment of 20 November 2017; the articles of association adopted on 14 May 2025; the group accounts for the years to 30 June 2025 and 30 June 2022, and the 2025 accounts of Lush Retail and Cosmetic Warriors; Lush Retail's annual return of 27 July 2015; the Court of Appeal's judgment of 5 May 2017 in Cosmetic Warriors Ltd and Lush Cosmetics Ltd v Gerrie and Hawksley, [2017] EWCA Civ 324; Lush's own pages on its history, its founders and its employee trust, and its statement of 3 March 2023 on Silverwood Brands; Silverwood Brands' regulatory announcements of 30 June, 27 July and 9 October 2023 and 10 January and 1 May 2024; and reporting by City AM (17 June 2026) and the BBC (3 September and 22 December 2025). What is not claimed: how the 2025 petition ended, or whether it has; whether the Gerrie and Hawksley shares have changed hands since April 2026, which a private transfer would not show until the next confirmation statement; who holds the other 13% of Lush Retail today, last listed in 2015; the terms of the trust deed, which is not a public document; whether the 2026 bank facilities were completed; an exact count of UK shops; and the year or price at which The Body Shop bought the founders' earlier business, on which press accounts differ. If you spot something that needs correcting, email Highstreett and we will review it.