Forbes.com reported earlier this year that the world's largest cosmetics companies (6) were :

L'Oreal, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Proctor and Gamble, Shisheido and Coty.

This Forbes article has an interesting slideshow showing the world's top selling cosmetics.

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2006/02/08/best-selling-cosmetics_cx_me_0209feat_ls.html

This source ranks L'Oreal as #1 and Shisheido as #4 in terms of sales. Yes, Shisheido is the oldest:

http://www.hbs.edu/businesshistory/cases.html

Please note that the criteria for rankings differs - for eg either by market share in terms of outright sales or in terms of the best selling brand names which is different. The criteria used for the top 100 international brands in the following article did not include Proctor and Gamble which is the parent company for Max Factor and Covergirl:

http://bwnt.businessweek.com/brand/2006/

The 2006 Global brand rankings show that L'Oreal turns up as #1 cosmetics brand (#53 in the Global rankings) with Avon as the second most valuable brand (#62 in the Global rankings)

Further rankings (paid site) are available from :

http://www.euromonitor.com/World_Cosmetics_and_Toiletries_Marketing_Directory_2005

The British Library has extensive holdings on the cosmetics industry. You should be able to request these on an inter-library loan :

http://www.bl.uk/collections/business/cosmetic.html