She co-founded a cosmetics empire, rubbed shoulders with business royalty and is loved by the arts community but Ulrike Klein wants to have a ‘zero bank account’ when her time is up.

By Damon Kitney
Source: The Australian Business Review
December 22, 2023

Opinionated and unapologetic, Ulrike Klein co-created iconic Australian cosmetics brand Jurlique, socialised and moved in the Packer family inner business circle and her philanthropy is legendary within the Australian arts community. But she will never forget her father’s funeral in 1986 when she found out from sister Kate that she had been disinherited. Ulrike, who then lived in the Adelaide Hills, never saw her father, Hermann Fischer, in the final months of his life. “He had a medical situation, suffering an aneurysm, and I wanted to go see him because we had never made peace. But my siblings assured me he’d had an operation and would be fine. Then suddenly, he was gone,” she says. Hermann, a German entrepreneur who built his family business from nothing and was a prisoner of the Russians during World War II, was 76 when he died in Germany. “I went to his funeral and afterwards said to my sister, ‘I know our father has just died. But I need to know where I stand.’ She replied to me: ‘Don’t you know? You have been disinherited’.” Born in a small village in the Harz Mountains in Germany and having grown up in the countryside, there were expectations Ulrike would work in the family business. But instead, Hermann’s eldest daughter was a dreamer with a love of art and music. She played the violin from a young age. Her compromise was to study horticulture at Leibniz University in Hannover. But when she chose to not complete her exams – even after studying for them – and instead enrolled to study pedagogy at university in Lüneburg to become a primary school teacher, her father never forgave her. He took back the car he had gifted her and ceased any form of financial support.

In 1972 she married German biochemist and naturopath Jurgen Klein and 11 years later, with four children under 10 in tow, they emigrated to Australia. Today they are best known as the founders of the acclaimed South Australian biodynamic skincare company Jurlique, which they created in 1985 and which became their “fifth child”. Under their leadership, Jurlique grew from being a small family business into a successful global brand exporting to 18 countries, employing more than 200 people across Australia. For almost a decade they were partners in the business with the Packer family. Ulrike’s business success helped her give birth to what she calls her “sixth child” – the cultural centre known as UKARIA, which is surrounded by bushland on her Mount Barker property “Ngeringa” in the Adelaide Hills. The first part of the name represents her initials UK. The second part, aria (a song within opera), is derived from the Greek and Latin word “aer”, meaning air and freedom.

Today, Ulrike – who speaks with a thick German accent – is at peace with her father. She describes him as “an amazing, successful businessman”. “Looking back at that now, that actually gave me the passion,” she says of the shock of being left out of his will. “That way of being gave me the courage to be independent. To go to Australia and to start a business while I had four small children. We just did it.” Her father never trusted her with money and, given her passion for the arts, he was always worried she would never be able to support herself. But she says he did send her “quite an amount” of cash years before he died to help her buy a piece of Australian land. While the poor exchange rate with the Deutschmark at the time meant she lost half of it overnight, she had enough to buy a property that she could later borrow against. “I can understand my father, having been in Russia and a prisoner of war, really meant well. I am now very much at peace with his decision and it made me the person I am,” she says.

Having celebrating her 80th birthday in June, she says she has always been a “rebel” at heart. Speaking her mind lost her father’s favour. It also helped her make the difficult decision to separate from her husband. It has also led to disagreements with her own children. But she stresses her rebelliousness has never been directed against anything or anyone. “For me, I don’t take anything put in front of me without questioning it. From very early on, I always have refused to accept the status quo. I have been quite stubborn with that. A lot of hardship and difficulties have come towards me as a result of that,” she says. “But it is me wanting to protect my curiosity. I want to look at the world in my way.”

The Packer influence
Ulrike was exposed to the healing powers of herbs from an early age. Her parents grew all of their own vegetables to feed the family. She had what she calls “an amazing, very deep relationship” with her mother. “She represented a generation of women who did what they had to do. There wasn’t a lot of space for a life that was yours,” she says of Else Fischer, who passed away in 1982 at the age of just 59 after a battle with colon cancer.

When Ulrike and Jurgen came to Adelaide in 1983 they initially lived and worked on a farm in the Adelaide Hills called “Old Coach Way”, 5km from the property that now houses UKARIA. After parting ways with the owners, they set up their own firm to produce a healing, plant-based skincare range from a rented cheese factory in Mount Barker, bankrolled by an interest-free loan from a friend. It was inspired by a company the Kleins founded in 1974 called LIVOS (the Celtic word for life force), in which they researched and extracted essences from plants to use in food, cosmetic and paint products. The first order for the new business, which they called Jurlique, came from an American company. For the first five years Jurlique exported more than 95 per cent of its products because there was no market in Australia for natural cosmetics.

The Kleins treated their offshore distributors – which were established in China, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong – as family. Ulrike says the secret of Jurlique’s success was its vision. “It was very much grounded in a philosophy and our belief that the natural healing qualities of herbs would be the future in skincare,” she says, noting it never “went corporate”. “So from the very start, we never compromised those practices in Jurlique. We grew slowly. We invited our customers to participate in their own beauty from within.”

In 2002, the Kleins sold a 25 per cent stake in the business to the Packer family. Ulrike only met Kerry Packer once at the billionaire’s famed Park St, Sydney office. “To go into Kerry’s office, your heart was pumping. It was an atmosphere I didn’t know. Being German, I have deep respect for important people,” she recalls. “I went to Park St many times, but it was usually to meet (Kerry’s son) James. James came to Mount Barker many times. At one stage Thora, my eldest daughter, was heavily involved in Jurlique and she had a lovely relationship with James. We had this family culture of belonging. “We all met on the same level and I think that was quite attractive to James. That openness and frankness.”

Ulrike has a son named Erinn, a winemaker, as well as Thora, Sophia and Jonas. She believes the way they were encouraged to live their dreams had “quite an impact” on James Packer. “James invited Jurgen and I to a dinner at his Bondi apartment. He had quite an inclination to spiritual themes and deeper talking so there was definitely a synergy. James and his people really understood what Jurlique was about,” Ulrike says. “I have always had a soft spot and a deep care for James.”

In 2004 the Kleins sold a further 50 per cent stake in the business to the Packer family, after Ulrike called time on her marriage to Jurgen. The split had been coming for some time, but was amicable. “Without our relationship and marriage, I would not be in Australia, there would be no Jurlique. We had the same vision. But then there came a time where we held different values. He closed the Jurlique door, the Australia door and our relationship changed,” she says. “I am not someone who closes doors. It wasn’t easy, but I had to do it. It was time for us to part.”

Family and business friction
By 2006 the Packers had brought two offshore investors into Jurlique: American billionaire Nelson Peltz’s Triarc Companies and US private equity firm JH Partners. Ulrike stayed on the board but had no role in management. She says it wasn’t hard letting go. “Selling Jurlique and leaving my relationship with Jurgen happened around the same time. We didn’t sell Jurlique because we were in financial strife. It needed more business acumen to build it to the next level. We gave all we could to that fifth child of ours,” she says. “The hardship for me came when the American firms got involved. The leadership chopped and changed. I was on the board but I felt like a puppet. It was so painful and truly frustrating.” In February 2007 Jurlique was fined $3.4m for price fixing which was the highest ever imposed in Australia for resale price maintenance. The Federal Court imposed the fine on four Jurlique companies and Jurgen Klein.

In December 2011 Japanese cosmetics firm Pola Orbis Holdings agreed to pay an extraordinary $335m for Jurlique. It wanted 100 per cent ownership so it bought out all the investors, including the Kleins and James Packer. Yet Ulrike still retains her connection to Jurlique and even recently met its new CEO. “What is really important to me is that there is a real intertwinedness between Jurlique and UKARIA. The place UKARIA was built on was once a Jurlique herb farm and Jurlique is a sponsor of the concerts at UKARIA,” she says. “So both organisations value culture. We are not about corporate, we are about personal relationships.”

UKARIA, which opened in 2015 and is run by Alison Beare, features a 220-seat concert hall, state-of-the-art acoustics, an artists’ studio, conference and function facilities, indoor art works and outdoor sculptures. It has as become a destination for Australian and international artists and audiences. Looking ahead, Ulrike is determined to keep it independent of government funding to avoid being stifled by bureaucracy. “I believe it is a cultural leader. We live in a time when funding for artists is being cut. So UKARIA is truly a free-spirited place for artists to create freely and for audiences to come. It is not elitist at all. It is special place where they can live in nature,” she says.

UKARIA is now owned by a philanthropic entity known as the Ulrike Klein Foundation and all of her wealth goes into ensuring the longevity of the centre. But it wasn’t always that way. When she sold out of Jurlique, she initially established a family office and foundation with her four children. But tensions with their mother over the control and direction of the entity soon bubbled to the surface, as two of them resigned as directors. “It was really painful. First one child left, then another. They are all strong characters, they don’t like to be told what to do,” she says. “So I handed the foundation over to them. It is called the Klein Family Foundation and it is all them now. I wanted them to be free to find their passion.” Ulrike notes that seven years ago each of the children were given their inheritance with no strings attached. “I’ve had my conflicts with all of them and that untangling was painful. But we removed the roadblocks that didn’t allow us to be free with each other,” she says. She stresses there will be “no second serve” of money for the children, which they fully support.

When her time comes, Ulrike wants to die with “a zero bank balance”. “For me it has been about finding a structure where the money I am a custodian of makes a difference. To have input into that is incredibly rewarding. It is scary at times, but it is what I want to do,” she says. Ulrike enjoyed one of the most special moments of her life in 2023 when she celebrated her milestone birthday with her children and grandchildren at UKARIA. It was a day to reflect on the themes of her life and her milestone achievement of leaving UKARIA free to thrive, forever. “I am very grateful for UKARIA that it worked out that way. I always said I wanted to live a life defined not from the outside, but from inside,” she says. “On my birthday, we felt so free. My children are all free spirits and there was so much friendship and love that day. “They love UKARIA, they are so proud of it. They respect it is now my life. To be in that space together was very special.”