42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Five of the best female entrepreneurs in the business.

Some have attained celebrity status as a by-product of the job, such as Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, although the latter could now be argued to be more infamous than famous. Anita Roddick achieved fame through her high profile campaigns and ethical stance, while Michelle Mone is a highly skilled media manipulator. Judy Craymer, meanwhile, is becoming famous by virtue of simply being so damn successful.

1. Oprah Winfrey started from humble beginnings to become host of the highest rated talk show in history and has since turned herself into a veritable industry. Thought to be the world's only black billionaire, worth over $1.4bn, Winfrey's interests cover TV, film, radio, magazine publishing and books. She has also been voted one of the most influential people on the planet more times than any other woman.
2. The original domestic goddess Martha Stewart may still be barred from an executive role in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, but shares in her company more than doubled during her brief sojourn in prison. Stewart spent the time working out, losing weight and developing yet more recipes. She is worth a cool $970m and her empire covers TV, radio, publishing, merchandising and house building.
3. Dame Anita Roddick demonstrated that caring, sharing and corporate could go together as she built the Body Shop into a multinational, multimillion pound network with over 2,000 stores in 53 countries. Launched in 1976, Body Shop pioneered an ethical agenda, combining campaigns against injustice in whatever form with pragmatic entrepreneurialism. It was bought by cosmetics giant L'Oreal earlier this year for £652m, which is thought to have yielded a £130m payday for Roddick and her husband.
4. Winner of the World Young Business Achiever in 2000, Michelle Mone is the inventor of that contradiction in terms, Ultimo, the comfortable push-up bra. Her company MJM International went on to create the even more unfathomable backless, frontless bra beloved by flesh flashing celebrities. Mone is a shrewd manipulator of publicity as shown by the tsunami of press coverage generated when she replaced Rod Stewart's girlfriend Penny Lancaster with his ex-wife Rachel Hunter as the face and body of the Ultimo brand in 2003.
5. Judy Craymer is the first woman to make it into the top ten of Management Today's Britain's Top 100 Entrepreneurs list thanks to the runaway success of her company Littlestar Productions, which is behind the musical Mamma Mia. Craymer, whose personal wealth now totals £78m, jacked in her successful career in film and TV production to put on the Abba musical. She sold her flat and spent every penny she had to put on the show and five years later had grossed $750m from 11 productions around the world.