De Beers is a diamond company whose history reaches back to 1888, when British-born entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes consolidated South Africa's diamond mines into De Beers Consolidated Mines. For much of the 20th century the group controlled the majority of the world's rough diamond supply and, under Ernest Oppenheimer from the 1920s, built the marketing monopoly behind the famous 'A diamond is forever' slogan (coined in 1947). In 2001, more than a century after the mining business began, LVMH and the De Beers group launched the De Beers Jewellers retail brand, a London-founded fine-jewellery house whose diamond craftsmanship is rooted in Africa - Namibia, Botswana and South Africa - and whose collections include Lotus by DE BEERS and Talisman.