Liz Claiborne, born Elizabeth Claiborne Ortenberg in 1929 in Brussels, Belgium, is an American business executive and fashion designer.
The daughter of an American bank manager, Claiborne lived abroad until 1939 when her family fled the Nazis and after World War II (1939-1945) returned to Europe to study art.
In 1950 Claiborne won a fashion design contest sponsored by Harper's Bazaar magazine. She then took a job as design assistant with a New York clothing manufacturer and later joined Jonathan Logan as chief designer of junior dresses. She left in 1976 and established Liz Claiborne, Inc., where she designed and produced moderately priced sportswear for women. Her aim was to provide clothes appropriate for either work or leisure, and her designs were marked by cleanly sculptured silhouettes and splashes of color which quickly supplanted the dark, tailored suits then popular.
In 1980, Claiborne was named the fashion industry's first Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year. A year later her firm made a public stock offering, after which it began to diversify, adding petite, dress, and shoe divisions.
In 1986 the company was listed among the Fortune 500 for the first time. In 1987 Claiborne, already president, was elected chairman and chief executive officer. She retired in 1989 and then lectured at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School.
She was advised in 1997 that she had a rare form of cancer affecting the lining of the abdomen. Liz Claiborne died on June 26, 2007 at the age of 78, following a long battle with the cancer.