After 35 years of building Elemis, Sean Harrington is moving to investment bank Lempriere Wells as partner.
As part of the move, the company will be renamed Lempriere Wells Harrington. The appointment also marks the firm’s focused expansion into the U.S. market, with Harrington advising executives and founders on operational strategy and enterprise value as they scale their businesses and prepare for what’s next. Prior to this, Lempriere Wells has been behind some of Australia and Asia’s fastest-growing beauty businesses.
Alice Wells, founder of Lempriere Wells, said, “We are building a truly unique global investment bank for the next generation of disruptive beauty and wellness consumer brands. Sean is exactly who we want founders to sit across from as they think about and plan their future.”
The firm tends to operate in the midmarket on deals sized between $30 million and $300 million.
“It’s an important point because size does matter, as we all know,” said Lempriere. “But the big banks want to represent big deals because multibillion-dollar deals pay the fees and make the whole system work and so, smaller deals are less important. Whereas for us, a $150 million, a $200 million deal is super important. I personally run every deal. Our deal team size is the same as a consumer deal team within a major bank. And while regionally there are very strong, midmarket advisers per geography, there isn’t anyone that’s finding things in Europe to take to China or finding Australian things to take to the U.S. That’s probably because it’s a lot more work, and it’s potentially harder cross language and cultural barriers, but it’s the work that we love to do, and it’s why we’ve chosen that niche.”
Harrington cofounded Elemis in 1990 and led it from launch through the end of 2025, taking the business global and steering it through multiple transactions — including a $900 million sale from private equity to a strategic holding company in 2019.
“I have spent more than three decades building, scaling and transacting in this industry, and I know how consequential the right advice can be at each stage of a founder’s journey. From the moment I met Alice, I recognized she was building something rare,” said Harrington. “Most banks show up once a business is already built, but LWH shows up long before and stays long after. Together we will bring founders a unique perspective having lived through each side of the journey ourselves — from building category-defining businesses to navigating what comes next.”