Some say that behind every great man is a great woman. In the case of these billionaires, it was actually a great mother who helped them defy the odds to join the three-comma club.
At least 25 self-made billionaires were raised primarily by a single mom before going on to build businesses such as Home Depot, WhatsApp and Patron tequila. Their mothers, some of whom escaped abusive husbands or were widowed at a young age, often worked multiple jobs, facing economic uncertainty as they gave up their own dreams to put their kids first. Meanwhile two of the most famous self-made women billionaires on the planet got their starts as single moms: Diane Hendricks, who got pregnant as a teen, divorced her baby’s father young and went on to support her son by becoming a Playboy Bunny and working in real estate before remarrying, while single mom JK Rowling was on welfare when she wrote the Harry Potter series.
After his father walked out on the family, Jay-Z’s mother, Gloria Carter, worked for the city of New York and as a security guard to bring up the rap legend in Brooklyn’s Marcy projects. “We were living in a tough situation, but my mother managed; she juggled,” Jay-Z once recalled. Calendly founder Tope Awotona was also raised by a single mom after he witnessed his father get shot and killed in a carjacking in their home country of Nigeria. She moved her family halfway across the world to the United States shortly after.
Two of the world’s five richest people hail from single mothers: Elon Musk, whose mom balanced five jobs after immigrating to Canada with her children, and Jeff Bezos, whose mother gave birth at 17 years old and took night school classes while working at a bank before meeting Miguel Bezos, who became the Amazon billionaire’s stepfather. (A third member of the top five, Larry Ellison, contracted pneumonia at nine months old, prompting his overwhelmed teenage mother to give him up to relatives; he didn’t meet her again until he was 48.)
Among the billionaire “supermoms” is Dede Barnard, who raised fintech mogul Hayes Barnard in St. Louis, Missouri, as a single parent after divorcing Barnard’s alcoholic father. Dede, the daughter of a legendary high school football coach, simultaneously worked three jobs to keep her family afloat. She drove a Subaru 60,000 miles each year selling lawbooks for Commerce Clearing House while substitute teaching and grinding through night shifts at T.J. Maxx.
“That third job almost broke her,” says Barnard, who often spent his days alone as an only child, playing with Legos while his mom was on the road. He watched her sell off inherited family jewelry and silver just to keep the lights on. From a young age, Barnard assured his mom that his success would propel them to the top. “As soon as I can, I’ve got us,’” he recalls telling her. “‘I’m going to create an amazing company.’”
Barnard, inspired by watching his mother worry over their high utility bills decades earlier in that small apartment, fulfilled that promise by founding Paramount Equity Mortgage in 2003, which later evolved into GoodLeap, a finance platform that helps homeowners finance climate-friendly house upgrades. He worked at Oracle and residential energy firm SolarCity before launching his company, where Dede worked for nearly 17 years, before retiring in late 2024.
Decades after they overcame their struggles, Barnard took Dede to Reteti, an elephant orphanage in Kenya powered by his foundation’s solar technology. On that same trip, he flew her in a helicopter to the peak of an African mountain to watch the sunset with his wife and kids. Sitting by the fire, Barnard recalls that Dede looked at him and said “We made it.”
Yet even today, the grit and determination Dede instilled in her son hasn’t left her. At 80, she still mows her own lawn, cleans her own home and three times a week, cooks six-course meals for GoodLeap employees.
Here are some of the most notable billionaires who were raised by a single mom:
*Estimated Net Worth
#1. Elon Musk ($807.9 B*)
Mother: Maye Musk
Source of Wealth: Tesla, SpaceX
After separating from her abusive husband (with whom Elon maintained a complex and turbulent relationship throughout his life), Maye Musk worked as a dietitian and a nutrition consultant, cold-calling doctors and sitting in waiting rooms for hours hoping they would meet with her. Instead of pursuing a Ph.D at the University of Cape Town, she moved her son, now the richest person in the world, to Canada to help him avoid military service and eventually pursue an interest in computers in the United States. Maye ended up living paycheck to paycheck while working multiple jobs as a researcher at the University of Toronto, including nutrition teacher, model and modeling coach. The Musks lived in a one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment, where Maye and her daughter shared a room while Elon slept on the living room couch. In 2018, Maye became CoverGirl’s oldest ambassador, at the age of 69; her third book comes out in September.
#2. Li Ka-Shing ($50.1 B)
Mother: Cheung Bik-chin
Source of wealth: CK Hutchison Holdings
After his father died of tuberculosis when he was 15, the future billionaire quit school to support his mother in war-torn Hong Kong. He worked 16-hour days in a plastic factory to support the family. “The burden of poverty and this bitter taste of helplessness and isolation sort of branded on my heart forever the questions that still drive me,” he told Forbes in 2010. Today, his CK Hutchison Holdings conglomerate does $65 billion in annual revenues across industries such as retail, infrastructure and telecommunications.
#3. Jan Koum ($17 B)
Mother: Faina Koum
Source of wealth: WhatsApp
Faina Koum moved from Ukraine to Mountain View, California, when her son was 16 years old, fleeing the politically unstable environment in their home country. The pair lived in a government-assisted apartment while she babysat and a young Koum swept the floor at a grocery store to help pay the bills. After Faina was diagnosed with cancer, they lived off her disability allowance; she passed away in 2000. Fourteen years after her death, Koum signed the $19 billion deal to sell his messaging app WhatsApp to Meta (then Facebook) at the welfare office where he and his mom once stood in line for food stamps.
#4. Arthur Blank ($10.4 B)
Mother: Molly Blank
Source of wealth: Home Depot
After Blank’s father died when he was 15, his mother, Molly, took over the family’s struggling pharmaceutical business. The 37-year-old mother of two, who had no prior business experience, worked until 10 p.m. most nights. The family lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, where the future Home Depot founder watched his mom sleep on a pull-out couch in the foyer so he and his brother could have the only bedroom. “My mom gave me my first lesson in entrepreneurship: being driven and incredibly resilient under stressful circumstances,” Blank said after she passed away in 2015 at the age of 99.
#5. Thomas Tull ($5.3 B)
Source of wealth: Legendary Entertainment
Tull was born to a single mother outside Binghamton, New York. She worked two jobs while Tull helped support the family by mowing lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter. He went on to found Legendary Entertainment, a production company that backed blockbuster hits such as Interstellar and The Dark Knight. He sold the company for $3.5 billion in 2015.
#6. Dan D’Aniello ($4.8 B)
Mother: Beatrice Laconi D’Aniello
Source of wealth: Private Equity
D’Aniello’s mom worked four jobs in Butler, Pennsylvania—including at a deli, as a clerk and as a dance teacher—to put her only child through school. He helped pay the bills by working as a bag boy at his uncle’s produce company. Beatrice passed away in 2002. Last year, D’Aniello funded the construction and renovation of a chapel at his alma mater, Syracuse University, with a painting dedicated to his mom.
#7. John Paul DeJoria ($3 B)
Mother: Evanthia DeJoria
Source of wealth: Tequila, hair care products
Raised in a one-bedroom house in Echo Park, Los Angeles, DeJoria’s mom, a Greek immigrant, sent him and his brother to a foster home during the week so she was able to go to work. “I remember once in junior high school, on a Friday, my mom came home from work and said to my brother and I, “You know, between us, we have only 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we’re happy, so we are rich,” he told Forbes in 2011. DeJoria, who was twice homeless himself, credits her maternal optimism for his billionaire success.
#8. Hayes Barnard ($2.9 B)
Mother: Dede Barnard
Source of wealth: Fintech
After two divorces, one from an early marriage and the second from Barnard’s alcoholic father, Dede refused to return to her hometown of Hinsdale, Illinois. Instead, she raised Barnard in a small apartment in Missouri, where she hustled in three jobs to afford food and laundry money. “She would walk to the laundromat every single day with coins in her hand,” Hayes says. “My football uniform could have been dirty but instead she went every single night because I only had one football uniform. I saw that work ethic, but I also saw that vulnerability.”
#9. Kenny Troutt ($1.7 B)
Mother: Nadine Adams
Source of wealth: Telecom
Raised in a housing project in Mount Vernon, Illinois, Troutt watched his mother fight to keep the lights on. She worked as a bartender and a school cook. Troutt paid his way through college by selling life insurance, eventually building Excel Communications into a telecom giant.
#10. LeBron James ($1.4 B)
Mother: Gloria James
Source of wealth: Basketball
“You think LeBron James is a champion? Gloria James is a champion too. She’s my champion,” James wrote in a 2014 essay. She was 16 when she gave birth to the future NBA great. After her own mother passed away, the pair lost their house and moved twelve times in three years. When LeBron turned nine, Gloria sent him to live with his football coach to give him stability. A year later, LeBron joined her in a two-bedroom, government-assisted apartment complex. Today, she serves as the vice president of his foundation; his media company, SpringHill, is named after the apartment complex where the two finally found a home.
Read the full article here
