Gustave Leven

Origins and early life

Gustave Leven was a French businessman who in 1947, asked by his stockbroker father to find a buyer for a mineral spring at Vergèze, bought it himself with Maurice Epry and Jean Davray.

Work and career

He raised Perrier's output from 30 to 150 million bottles between 1948 and 1952, launched the brand in the United States in 1976 — where it sold some 300 million bottles a year by 1988 — and left its presidency in 1990 with Perrier the world's leading mineral water; Nestlé took the company over in 1992. He was Jewish: the grandson of Narcisse Leven, co-founder of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860 and its president until his death, and the son of Georges Leven, who was active in the Alliance in his turn.

The Second World War convinced him that Israel had to be a secure homeland for Jews, and he gave most of his fortune to that end, founding the Rashi Foundation in 1984 for education and social programmes among disadvantaged people in Israel and France. He insisted on giving anonymously and named the foundation not after himself but after Rashi, the medieval French commentator on the Torah.