Martha Tilaar Dies After Illness
Jakarta (ANTARA) – Martha Tilaar, a pioneer and founder of a local natural cosmetics brand, died on Wednesday morning (14 October) after an illness.
“We ask for your prayers so that Mother may rest in peace with God. She may have been ill for the past week. It was actually only a mild illness, just flu, but today she passed away in her sleep,” said Dr Kilala Tilaar, Martha Tilaar’s youngest child, when met at the funeral home in the Patra Kuningan area of Jakarta on Wednesday.
Kilala said his mother’s death was a profound loss for him and the rest of the family, as well as for the country’s beauty industry. Nevertheless, he felt that she had passed away peacefully.
“But Indonesia has certainly lost a pioneering figure in beauty, a pioneer of local brands that Mother Martha Tilaar had championed for so long. So I think it is not only us [the family] who have suffered a loss; many in the beauty industry will probably feel it too,” Dr Kilala Tilaar said.
Martha Tilaar’s eldest child, Bryan David Emil Tilaar, also said that his mother had received hospital treatment for around eight to nine days before her death.
Dr (HC) Martha Tilaar died at 6.22am Western Indonesian Time on Wednesday (14 October) at Medistra Hospital in Jakarta, aged 89. Her body is due to be buried on Friday, 16 October 2026, at San Diego Hills Memorial Park in Karawang, West Java.
Martha Tilaar founded the Martha Tilaar Group, which grew into a business group operating in cosmetics and herbal medicine manufacturing and marketing, beauty education, spas and distribution.
She began her career in the beauty industry in 1970, opening a modest salon in the garage of her parents’ home in Menteng, Jakarta.
Drawing on her knowledge of modern beauty techniques and inspired by her family’s traditional knowledge of jamu and Javanese palace beauty recipes, Martha Tilaar developed an approach that combined science, natural resources and Indonesia’s local wisdom.
Through the various brands she developed, the woman born in Kebumen on 4 September 1937 helped lay the foundations for a local beauty industry that brought Indonesia’s natural resources and culture to the global stage.