Issie Lapowsky | Inc. magazine
From the June 2011 issue of Inc. magazine

CEO Passions: Gymnastics

Twice a day, skin care entrepreneur Ole Henriksen heads to his backyard to swing, roll, and twist on gymnastic equipment.

"There should be time for every little bit in life—for work, friends, and hanging upside down like a monkey." —Ole Henriksen

Randi Berez

"There should be time for every little bit in life—for work, friends, and hanging upside down like a monkey." —Ole Henriksen

 

Ole Henriksen started doing gymnastics as a young boy in Nibe, Denmark. He mastered basic tricks on the rings and parallel bars at school. A fan of the circus, he also made trapezes out of rope and wood and hung them from trees in his backyard. After a stint as a show dancer in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the early 1970s, Henriksen moved to Los Angeles and opened the OleHenriksen Face/Body Spa in 1975. To stay fit, he practiced gymnastics on Muscle Beach in Santa Monica. Today, Henriksen's botanical skin care line, which was acquired by LVMH in February, is available in 22 countries. Now 60, Henriksen still practices gymnastics twice a day, on rings and parallel bars in the backyard of his Los Angeles home. "I run from meeting to meeting all day, but when I get going on the rings, the stress rolls off my shoulders," he says. "It's Zen-like."

Man of Steel
Henriksen is shown here doing an L support on the rings in his backyard in the Hollywood Hills. His twice-daily gymnastics sessions last 20 minutes to 45 minutes each.

The Entertainer
When he was 8,Henriksen and his cousin started putting on circus performances in a storage facility near his parents' house in Denmark.

Issie Lapowsky is a reporter at Inc. magazine. She has covered lifestyle and entertainment for the New York Daily News, and her work has been published in BlackBook magazine and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.