In a recommended offer that has the backing of 43 percent of Body Shop shareholders, including founder Anita Roddick, L’Oreal said on Friday it would pay 300 pence cash per share, a 34 percent premium over the share price on Feb. 21, when press speculation over the deal began driving the stock higher.

Shares in the seller of honey and oat scrub mask and grape seed cream, which warned on profits in January after posting weaker-than-expected sales, surged over 10 percent to stand at 295-1/2 pence by 0930 GMT, while in Paris, L’Oreal stock rose 0.9 percent to 75.25 euros.

"Body Shop isn’t the wacky ethical business it once was and it has been going upmarket in recent years, selling more expensive ‘masstige’ (mass prestige) skincare and so on, so the approach from L’Oreal wasn’t that big a surprise," analyst Nick Bubb of brokers Evolution said.

L’Oreal said it planned to operate the British company as a completely separate entity, adding that Roddick, who opened her first store in the English south coast resort of Brighton in 1976, would retain her current role as consultant to Body Shop.

"They (L’Oreal) understand what a maverick The Body Shop was in the business world and how we helped change the language of business, incorporating the action of social change, especially in human rights, animal welfare, the environment and community trade," Roddick said in a statement.

The two companies — one the world’s most powerful cosmetics producer, the other a retail chain with deep roots in the "ethical" business movement, might seem unlikely bedfellows, but L’Oreal said there were clear advantages for both.

The French company, whose brands include Garnier, Redken and Lancome, gains a 2,000-strong retail network in 54 countries with a 2004-5 turnover of 419 million pounds, and access to the rapidly-growing mass prestige sector.

Concerns over the animal testing that Roddick has long campaigned against should also be assuaged by the fact that L’Oreal abandoned such research in 1989, it said.

The deal, which is subject to a regulatory approval that should be a formality, will not have an impact on the French group’s earnings in 2006 but will start contributing thereafter.

Roddick, who together with her family owns about 19 percent of Body Shop, started out by selling toiletries made by a herbalist from natural raw ingredients preferably sourced from the developing world.

Packaging was recycled or innovative — in one celebrated case Roddick offered discounts to customers bringing back the urine sample bottles the cosmetics were sold in for refills.

Growth was rapid, and the company took its first international step in 1978, awarding a franchise in Brussels.

The company was publicly listed in 1984, and Princess Diana presided over the opening of a new headquarters in 1986.

There followed a period of expansion and diversification into areas such as mail order, and the group began publication of the Big Issue magazine produced and sold by and for homeless people in the UK in 1991.