Like Oprah, Chanel did not have the best start in life. It is named after its founder, French fashion designer Coco Chanel. Coco ChanelĮven if you know nothing about fashion or fragrances, you will have heard of the famous luxury fashion brand Coco Chanel. It is remarkable how Oprah achieved this level of success despite personal challenges, sexism and racism. “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new centre of gravity. Additionally, Oprah has released books, radio shows, acts, voice acts, and uses her wealth for philanthropic causes. To this day, Oprah remains the CEO of Harpo Productions, oversees the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and produces television series. Haro Productions then took over producing her talk show from ABC, back when it was rebranded and picked up nationally as the talk show we know today. She took advantage of her popularity to found her own production company, Harpo Productions.

Oprah didn’t just ride the waves of success of The Oprah Winfrey Show. She turned her early broadcasting career into hosting morning shows and launched the iconic The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986. Oprah’s career in media kicked off when she moved from working for her high school radio station to co-anchoring a local news station at the young age of 19. She had to navigate financial struggles, a complicated family structure, and the loss of a baby after suffering sexual abuse. She grew up in rural Mississippi and Tennessee in the 1950s and ‘60s under complicated circumstances. Oprah didn’t enjoy a stable childhood or the benefits of nepotism. Americans view her as an iconic manifestation of the American Dream.īut how did she create the media empire we know her for today? She embodies our modern image of a successful businesswoman. With a net worth of Є 2.49 billion, Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest and most successful female entrepreneurs on the planet. In this article, we want to highlight four famous female entrepreneurs and what their stories can teach us. So, how did the most successful businesswomen overcome these obstacles? Making a distinction between “entrepreneurs” and “female entrepreneurs” in this article makes this issue obvious.ĭespite being “the fastest growing category of entrepreneurship worldwide,” female entrepreneurs still have to overcome patriarchal systems within the business world. Over the past 20 years, female entrepreneurship has grown by 114% worldwide with plenty of famous female entrepreneurs emerging.ĭespite this progress, we have barely scratched the surface of equal opportunities for all genders in the business world.

Female entrepreneurs success stories