The Women Behind Spanx, Barbie, Pepperidge Farm, and Fenty

Madam C.J. Walker (hair care): Born Sarah Breedlove to formerly enslaved parents, she worked as a laundress before building a hair-care and beauty business in the early 1900s. She is often described as one of America’s first self-made female millionaires, and she trained an army of sales agents. The original historic company officially ceased operations in July 1981.

Sara Blakely (Spanx): She was selling fax machines door to door when she cut the feet off pantyhose and turned the idea into a shapewear brand. She started with about $5,000 and no fashion or retail experience.

Diane Hendricks (ABC Supply): She co-founded a roofing-supply distributor with her husband in 1982. After his death in 2007 she kept growing it, and it became one of the largest building-materials distributors in the US.

Zhou Qunfei (Lens Technology): She left rural Hunan as a teenager and started as a factory assembly worker in Shenzhen. She went on to found a maker of touchscreen glass for phones, reportedly supplying major brands including Apple.

Judy Faulkner (Epic Systems): She started a healthcare software company in Madison, Wisconsin in 1979, long before hospitals were digitized. Epic’s records system is now used by a large share of US hospitals.

Margaret Rudkin (Pepperidge Farm): She began baking whole-grain bread at home in the 1930s because her son had allergies and she wanted additive-free food. Demand grew until it became a national brand.

Estée Lauder (cosmetics): She started by selling her chemist uncle’s skin creams. She built a prestige beauty company on free samples, gift-with-purchase promotions, and personal selling in department stores.

Mary Kay Ash (direct-sales cosmetics): She left a long direct-sales career where she felt passed over for promotion and founded Mary Kay in 1963. She built it around a sales force of independent women consultants.

Ruth Handler (Mattel): She co-founded Mattel and created Barbie after noticing her daughter preferring adult-looking paper dolls over baby dolls. At the time, a doll with an adult body was a risky idea.

Rihanna (Fenty): A pop star who moved into beauty and lingerie. Fenty Beauty’s wide shade range reshaped industry expectations, and the brand helped make her a billionaire.

Several of these (Blakely, Hendricks, Zhou) are about starting in a field where the founder had no insider status. Others (Handler, Rudkin) are about noticing an unmet need as a customer or parent. Net worth figures change every year.