Rechelbacher was born in
Klagenfurt,
Austria to an herbalist and shoe maker/designer, and was the youngest of three brothers. His family apartment overlooked a small salon across the street in central Klagenfurt. During his childhood, Rechelbacher had many opportunities to observe the daily activities of the salon which inspired him to choose a vocation or continue with a formal education in salon profession. At age fourteen, he embarked on a three-year apprenticeship in the beauty and salon industry. During his apprenticeship, he was a three-time winner of the Austrian Junior Championships. At seventeen, he moved to
Italy and started work at an exclusive salon in
Rome. In 1970, Rechelbacher went to Florida to participate in a number of different competitions. In 1978, he founded Aveda and began to expand the product line into hair, skin and body care, makeup, plant-based perfumes (aromatherapy) and lifestyle products. Following the
Exxon Valdez oil spill, Rechelbacher was the first to sign onto the Valdez Principles, now the
Ceres principles, joining corporate environmental responsibility with corporate bottom line. In 1992, along with his partner Kiran, he attended the
Earth Summit, where three key agreements occurred: the Climate Change Convention, a precursor to the Kyoto Protocol, the
Convention on Biological Diversity and an Intellectual Property Rights accord for indigenous peoples that included preventing actions that could be deemed culturally inappropriate and/or cause environmental destruction. Through this convention, Rechelbacher forged a relationship with the Brazilian
Yawanawa tribe and began a project cultivating uruku for its pigment and replanting seedlings in
deforested areas. Nearly two decades after Rechelbacher incorporated, he sold Aveda to the
Estee Lauder Companies but remained a consultant until March 2003. In the years following the sale of Aveda, Horst established Intelligent Nutrients. IN is an organic, food-grade, non-toxic plant-based hair, skin, body, aroma and lifestyle company with the primary emphasis on using organically grown ingredients. ==Projects==