[10] The company was founded by a partnership between Michael Marks, a Polish Jew[11][12][13][14][15] born in Slonim (now Belarus), who had migrated to Leeds, England in the early 1880s, and Thomas Spencer, a cashier from the English market town of Skipton in North Yorkshire.

[19] The next few years saw Michael Marks and Tom Spencer move the original Leeds penny bazaar to 20, Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, and they also opened market stalls in many locations around the North West of England.

[16] It also accepted the return of unwanted items, giving a full cash refund if the receipt was shown, no matter how long ago the product was purchased, which was unusual for the time.

Despite efforts to improve its image, the chain was never able to move beyond its reputation there as a stodgy retailer, one that catered primarily to senior citizens and expatriate Britons.

The first branch opened on 24 November 2011, on the Champs-Élysées in a ceremony attended by the company's CEO Marc Bolland, the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and the British Ambassador to France, Sir Peter Westmacott.

[35] At the time it was seen as a continuing success story, but with hindsight it is considered that during Sir Richard Greenbury's tenure as head of the company, profit margins were pushed to untenable levels, and the loyalty of its customers was seriously eroded.

[39] On 12 July a recovery plan was announced which would involve selling off its financial services business M&S Money to HSBC Bank, buying control of the Per Una range, closing the Gateshead Lifestore and stopping the expansion of its Simply Food line of shops.

[49][50] In November 2013, it was revealed that Bill Adderley, founder of homeware chain Dunelm Group, had built a £250 million stake in M&S over the past 18 months.

[70] Despite protests from groups including Save Britain's Heritage, The Twentieth Century Society and Create Streets, the plans were approved by Westminster City Council in November 2021,[71] and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan chose not to intervene.

[75] In July 2023, Gove rejected the plans to demolish and redevelop the store saying it conflicted with policies on heritage and design, and involved significant embodied carbon impact and waste.

[80][81] In December 2024, Gove's successor Angela Rayner approved the store's demolition, citing the advantages of a concentrated development in a highly accessible location, the employment and regeneration benefits, and "potential harm to the vitality and viability" of London's West End if permission had been refused.

[92] The company has overseas sourcing offices in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, mainland China, Ireland, Italy, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

The commitments span five themes: climate change, waste, sustainable raw materials, 'fair partnership' and health,[97] with the aim that, by 2012, it will:[99] Despite an 18% fall in the share price in January 2008, following the publication of their latest trading statement, the company confirmed that they would be continuing with the plan, saying that there were 'compelling commercial—as well as moral—reasons to do so'.

[106] In April 2009, the company began purchasing 2.6 TWh of renewable energy (wind and hydroelectric) from Npower, enough to power all Marks & Spencer stores and offices in England and Wales.

[108] M&S has sold a wide range of charitable women's clothes for Breakthrough Breast Cancer[109] for many years and the Ashbourne store collected a total of £2,000 for a local hospital's new ECG machine in 2010.

[119] Before Christmas 2006, twenty-two M&S shops were open for 24-hour trading including stores at Bolton, Middlebrook and at the Abbey Centre, Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland.

[124] In the Philippines, the Rustans Group of Companies serves as the official franchise partner[125] and operates a total of 18 M&S shops, the largest of which is located in Greenbelt Mall.

On 17 September 2013 the British ambassador to the Netherlands, Sir Geoffrey Adams, opened the first Dutch Marks & Spencer Food pilot store at a BP petrol station in Bijleveld beside the A12 motorway.

[135][136] In September 2021, M&S confirmed the closure of 11 stores in France and ended its partnership with SFH, saying it was "near impossible for us to serve fresh and chilled products to customers" following the UK's exit from the European Union.

Shops have been opened in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent, Lisburn Sprucefield in Northern Ireland,[141] and in the Barton Square section of The Trafford Centre, Manchester.

In later years, Erin O'Connor,[172] Myleene Klass,[172] David Beckham,[23] Antonio Banderas,[23] Claudia Schiffer,[23] Helena Christensen,[23] Tatjana Patitz,[23] Lisa Snowdon, Dannii Minogue, V V Brown, and Carmen Kass have featured in advertisements.

[177] Marks & Spencer released a series of planned television adverts in July 2011, featuring Twiggy, Minogue and V V Brown, as it started its corporate image revamp.

[178] On 31 March 2014, M&S launched the new iteration of its 'Leading Ladies' marketing campaign featuring Emma Thompson, Annie Lennox, Rita Ora and Doreen Lawrence.

[185] The scheme has been subject to controversy due to animal abuse being captured by hidden cameras at farms, with the RSPCA president calling it "utterly indefensible".

In July 2022, secret cameras caught lame animals "unable to get up to reach water" as workers killed goats "of no value" at an intensive farm producing cheese and milk for M&S.

[187] In April 2024, The Guardian obtained footage of pigs from RSPCA Assured farms at a slaughterhouse being hit in the face by workers with a paddle before entering a gas chamber to die.

[188] In May 2024, footage emerged from several intensive RSPCA Assured farms in the M&S supply chain showing sick, dying and dead hens alongside living ones.

[190] In October 2010, chairman Sir Stuart Rose was a signatory to a controversial letter to The Daily Telegraph[191] which claimed that "The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities", despite recent job cuts of 1,000 staff.

[193] In December 2013, Marks & Spencer announced that Muslim checkout staff in the UK could refuse to sell pork products or alcohol to customers at their till.

[197] Marks & Spencer introduced a hijab in its section of school uniforms in late 2018 and subsequently faced a backlash and boycott from some customers; the product is stocked for girls as young as three.