Three inspirational, self-made female billionaires
There are currently 327 females among the 2,668 people in the world who are billionaires, according to the latest Forbes rich list.
Some of those women are heiresses to massive companies such as L’Oreal, Walmart, and Koch Industries, but others find themselves among the world’s wealthiest people off their own steam and are self-made.
In this article we look at three inspirational, self-made female billionaires.
1) Denise Coates
Denise Coates is one such inspirational woman. Coates may not be a name you know because she famously shuns the limelight, but this British 54-year-old has a net worth tipping the scales at an incredible $5 billion. Coates earned a first-class honors degree in econometrics from the University of Sheffield in the north of England.
Upon leaving university, Coates began working in the cashier’s department of her father’s bookmaking company, eventually becoming managing director over a small chain of shops. Coates was a visionary and predicted online sports betting would explode. With this in mind, she purchased the bet365.com domain name on eBay in January 2000 and launched the online betting site a year later.
Coates’ company started life in a portacabin in a car park but quickly gained a huge chunk of market share. The company has not stopped growing and is now one of the biggest privately-owned sports betting companies on the planet, one that has annual revenue of $3.7 billion. Recent years have seen the emergence of some major rivals to Coates’ company, including US-friendly sportsbook xbet but Coates’ company continues thriving.
2) Whitney Wolfe Herd
Whitney Wolfe Herd is one of the newest self-made billionaires, joining the rich list in 2021 with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Wolfe Herd became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire and the youngest-ever woman to take a company public in February 2021 when Bumble floated on the stock market.
Wolfe Herd formerly worked for the dating app Tinder, where she became the vice president of marketing. She resigned from the company in April 2014 and filed a lawsuit for sexual harassment two months later.
Wolfe Herd received much online hate and decided to create a female-focussed dating app. She launched Bumble in December 2014, and the site boasted of 80 million matches and 15 million conversations within its first 12 months. Today, there are more than 100 million registered Bumble subscribers.
February 2021 saw Wolfe Herd list Bumble on the Nasdaq exchange. Her 18-month-old son was on her hip as she rang the famous Nasdaq bell. The company topped $13 billion in valuation, instantly propelling Wolfe Herd into the self-made billionaire’s club.
3) Oprah Winfrey
No list of inspirational self-made female billionaires would be complete without the legendary Oprah Winfrey. Now 68-years-old, Winfrey, who has a net worth of $2.6 billion, was once the world’s only black billionaire despite coming from humble beginnings.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi but later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She took a job at a radio station while still in high school and became the co-anchor for the local evening news, aged only 19. Her passionate delivery led her to the daytime talk show arena, and here Winfrey thrived.
Of course, Winfrey is best known for her long-running The Oprah Winfrey Show, which lasted for more than three decades. Over the years, Winfrey has interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars.
Winfrey is known for her generosity and philanthropy. She has donated hundreds of millions of dollars during her career, helping underprivileged people enjoy a better life, including awarding more than 500 scholarships and taking her entire 1,065 staff and their families on a Hawaiian vacation!
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