Lush co-founder Liz Bennett has retired from the ethical beauty retailer after 20 years at the business.

Bennett, whose retirement was flagged this week in documents filed at Companies House, retired from Lush in May.

She had been heading up the training and development department before she left the business. Bennett is no longer a shareholder in Lush.

Bennett was one of the key figures behind the creation of Lush, which is famous for its bath bombs, founding the retailer in 1994 with Mark and Mo Constantine, who are still substantial shareholders.

Bennett originally established a business with the Constantines in 1978 to produce handmade fresh cosmetics for The Body Shop, eventually becoming its biggest supplier. When The Body Shop bought out the founders for £9m in 1988, Constantine and Bennett went on to set up a catalogue-based mail order operation under the Cosmetics To Go banner in 1988.

This business collapsed, but Mark and Mo Constantine set up a Lush’s first shop in Poole in 1994, with Liz Bennett joining the fold again, in addition to Rowena Bird, Helen Ambrosen and Paul Greeves.

Lush, which has around 900 stores worldwide and 100 in the UK, continues to be owned by Mark and Mo Constantine.