When Forbes published the very first World's Billionaires List in 1987, only one self-made woman made the cut: German “Mail Order Queen” Grete Schickedanz, with a net worth of more than $1 billion. "Chic, blonde, energetic and physically tiny,” Schickedanz was a “sports addict” and attended Milan and Paris fashion shows, according to a 1987 Forbes story. The business was a success until World War II, when the factories that supplied Quelle’s goods were destroyed, crippling the business. After World War II ended, Grete Schickedanz rebuilt Quelle from scratch and turned it into Europe’s largest mail-order catalog business with $6 billion in revenue by 1987. According to a 1987 Forbes story, Grete ran the business while Gustav “stayed in the background, at first because of his Nazi past” before dying in 1977.

Source: Forbes March 08, 2017 14:00 UTC