Meet Jean Arnault, Bernard Arnault’s youngest LVMH heir: the MIT graduate runs Louis Vuitton watches, did work experience at McLaren Racing, and was inspired by his Tag Heuer CEO brother Frédéric

Jul 21 , 2022

Jean Arnault is the youngest heir to Bernard Arnault’s LVMH empire and currently runs Louis Vuitton watches. Photo: @arnaultjean/Instagram

LVMH boss and world’s third richest person Bernard Arnault has 5 kids, of which 23-year-old Jean Arnault is the youngest – he’s now CEO of Louis Vuitton watches

But the young executive is already highly qualified, with two master’s degrees from Imperial College London and MIT and experience at McLaren and Morgan Stanley

Jean Arnault is far from the average 23-year-old. For starters, he is the fifth and youngest child of Europe’s richest man, Bernard Arnault. Jean also doesn’t have a regular job since his family owns the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. He might even run the empire himself someday.

Jean Arnault is the youngest of Bernard Arnault’s children, and the most recent to be brought into the LVMH fold. Photo: @arnaultjean/Instagram

This budding French heir may only have got his foot in the LVMH door recently, but he’s already proving a force to be reckoned with. Here are five things to know about him.

He oversees Louis Vuitton watches

Jean Arnault is currently Louis Vuitton’s marketing and product development director for watches. Photo: @arnaultjean/Instagram

The youngest Arnault joined Louis Vuitton as the marketing and product development director for watches in 2021. Per Fashion Network, he splits his time between LV’s headquarters in Paris, and the label’s watch production site in Switzerland.

Jean’s older brother Frédéric, CEO of Swiss luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer, apparently awakened his interest in watchmaking.

Jean Arnault’s older brother Frédéric Arnault was promoted to be CEO of Tag Heuer in July 2020. Photo: @arnaultjean/Instagram

“I was a student in London when Frédéric started working at Tag Heuer,” Arnault told the Financial Times. “We have a close relationship and he started talking to me about the new watches and all the different things he was working on. I was fascinated. And that’s really the turning point. Once you start getting interested in it, it’s a bit of a rabbit hole.”

He has two master’s degrees

At just 23, Jean Arnault already has a BA and two master’s degrees under his belt. Photo: @arnaultjean/Instagram

Of course he does! Jean Arnault graduated with a baccalaureate degree in science with the highest honours at Saint Louis de Gonzague-Franklin in Paris in 2016. Later, he obtained a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London and another in financial mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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