The Sephora NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
52.3
/ 100
sephora.com
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Ranked in
Beauty & Personal Care Retail
#2
Subsidiary of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.
Sephora earns a NOligarchy Score of 52.44 out of 100 — where 100 represents zero political spending, zero shareholder payouts over workers, and zero regulatory infractions. That middling number masks a sharp internal imbalance: Sephora is relatively quiet in Washington and discloses little on executive compensation, but its regulatory record is the worst in its sector.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access includes disclosures reported at the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc. (parent company) level. Wealth Extraction and Playing by the Rules reflect this company directly.
Political Access
54.7
Wealth Extraction
64.9
Playing by the Rules
24.9
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 54.73/100. Sephora’s parent, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc., spent $480,000 lobbying the federal government from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), with no Political Action Committee (PAC) spending and only trace-level executive donations tied to Sephora. That is real spending, but modest by the standards of large retailers.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 65.25/100. No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for Sephora, limiting what can be assessed. The primary signal is a CEO pay ratio that sits well above what a typical worker earns.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 24.87/100. A single hazardous waste case in 2025 produced $775,000 in penalties — the third-largest regulatory fine in Sephora’s five-company sector — dragging this score down sharply.
Sephora ranks 2 out of 5 in the Health and Personal Care Retailers sector with a score of 52.44, above the sector average of 42.7. That ranking flatters: the sector is anchored by Walgreens Boots Alliance and CVS Health, making Sephora a middling performer in a weak field rather than a genuine accountability leader.
The Bottom Line: Collecting Public Money While Paying Regulatory Fines
Sephora reported $8.63 billion in U.S. retail sales — enough to make it a major player in beauty retail. Yet in 2025, state regulators hit the company with $775,000 in hazardous waste penalties, while the year before, Sephora collected $1 million in taxpayer-funded public subsidies. A company generating billions in revenue pocketed more from public grants than it paid in fines — and those fines were for breaking environmental rules, not a paperwork oversight. That is the sharpest tension the data reveals.
A Steady Drip of Federal Lobbying
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc., Sephora’s Paris-based parent, spent $480,000 lobbying the federal government across the two-year tracking period, with Sephora’s U.S. operations folded into that parent-level footprint. The cadence was strikingly consistent: precisely $60,000 every single quarter, without variation — a signal of an ongoing, professionally managed presence in Washington rather than a one-time push on a specific issue. That works out to $240,000 in 2025 alone, double the 2024 total as the pace held steady through 2026.
Federal Lobbying Spend by Quarter
$480K total
$60K
Q3 '24
$60K
Q4 '24
$60K
Q1 '25
$60K
Q2 '25
$60K
Q3 '25
$60K
Q4 '25
$60K
Q1 '26
$60K
Q2 '26
The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings do not identify specific issue areas, individual bills, or outside lobbying firms retained during this period — only the dollar totals. Sephora’s PAC contributed nothing across the tracking period, and executives tied to Sephora directed just $2,000 in individual donations to federal candidates in Q3 2024. No former government officials were hired as lobbyists. What the record shows is a company that chose to sustain a consistent federal lobbying presence — at a modest but uninterrupted level — without disclosing the specific policy agenda behind that spending.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap
Because Sephora is a subsidiary of LVMH, a foreign-domiciled parent, it is not required to publish a CEO pay ratio under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The best available figure is 115:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. That means the person at the top likely took home roughly 115 times the earnings of a typical Sephora worker — a gap that reflects not a specific disclosed number but an industry-wide benchmark standing in for missing data.
No stock buyback or dividend figures are publicly recorded for Sephora, so no calculation of what those funds could have meant for frontline workers is possible here.
A Hazardous Waste Fine and a Million-Dollar Windfall
Sephora’s entire regulatory record in the two-year tracking period comes down to one case: a $775,000 hazardous waste violation settled in 2025 and recorded by a California multi-agency enforcement body. That single infraction is the only violation matched to Sephora in this window, yet it is enough to rank the company third-worst out of five peers in its sector by penalty total. A beauty retailer generating billions in annual revenue paid what amounts to a rounding error on its balance sheet for breaking hazardous waste rules — less than one ten-thousandth of its annual sales.
The deeper irony is the timing. The year before that fine landed, Sephora collected $1,000,000 in public subsidies — taxpayer money channeled to a company owned by one of the world’s largest luxury conglomerates. The company received more in government grants than it paid in government penalties.
$1 million
taxpayer subsidies
$775,000
regulatory fines
1.3:1
Sephora collected $1 million in taxpayer subsidies against $775,000 in regulatory fines — 1.3 subsidy dollars for every $1 in penalties.
The two-year tracking period captures only a slice of Sephora’s full enforcement history; the Good Jobs First source database contains the company’s complete public docket going back further, and this window reflects only the most recent cases.