Its not dye thats coming off but the pigmented color. A leather repair person may be able to repair this, but dont expect this leather chair to last very long. It like throwing good money after bad if you spend very much on the repairs.

What's the difference b/t "dye" and "pigmented color"? It's not a hard shiny waxed leather, so I thought it might be aniline, though the brochure she had from Lane didn't say.

We have aniline dye leather jackets that are 20 yrs old (OK, we don't wear them much, and not in the rain though they have been sprinkled/snowed on a few times) and they have never done anything like this.

I forgot my camera the other day when I took her to dr.

The dye penetrates the leather, so on a 100% aniline dyed leather, the dye will not come off in the way your describe. Also if it was aniline or semi-aniline leather then Lane would definitely put this in their brochure. Corrected grain or pigmented leather makes up about 60% of the leather furniture sold, and about the other 35 % is going to be By-cast or some type of rebond. Only about 5% is true aniline dyed.
Leather is a natural product, normally not affected by water. But that doesnt mean you can or should wash your leather furniture.

It might be semi-aniline, I will have to look at the tag underneath. Still didn't think it would do that. Only thing I could think to tell her to do is not do anything to it, call the store. I think she spent about $1000 on the chair last year. Looked on the Lane website, I don't remember exactly what it looks like, the model I thought was close was leather match, but doesn't that just mean the seating area/arms are some kind of leather (likely protected or semi-aniline), and back is vinyl?

She swears all she did was wipe off the wet spot from his hair.

My husband and I purchased 2 red leather recliners almost 4 years ago. They have not held up at all. If I take a cloth with a little water the red dye starts coming off. Where my husband rests his head it has changed color - so it looks much darker where his head was. We called the store 2-3 years ago regarding this and they contacted the company which would not do anything about it. When we first purchased the chairs one of the seats had a dark spot on it which they replaced. Just not happy with this purchase at all especially for what we paid for them. Some areas on the arms of chair are turning darker as well.