Chinese billionaire Zhou Qunfei has a true-life rags-to-riches story. The world’s wealthiest self-made woman attributes this success to one thing: perseverance.
Qunfei was born the youngest of three children in 1970 to a poor family in the tiny farming village of Xiangxiang. Her father was a former soldier who had lost a finger and been partially blinded in an industrial accident in the 1960s and her mother died when she was five. At home, she helped raise pigs and ducks for food and additional money. “I had to constantly think about where my next meal is and how I am going to get it,” she said.
Qunfei loved school, excelling in class, but was forced to drop out at 16 when she moved in with her uncle’s family in Shenzhen to search for better work. Undeterred, she intentionally picked jobs near Shenzhen University so she could take part-time courses there.
Qunfei eventually landed a factory job making watch faces for about $1 a day. Struggling with excruciating working conditions, she offered her resignation – but her supervisors, admiring her spirit, promoted her instead and she rose up through the company. In 1993, she used her meager savings of $3,000 to launch her own business, attracting customers by promising higher-quality watch lenses. It became a family business, with Qunfei and her seven cousins and siblings working and living together in a three-bedroom apartment for four years.
Qunfei received her big break in 2003 when Motorola hired her to develop glass screens for their Razr V3. She then launched Lens Technology – and from there, the sky was the limit. She received orders from HTC, Nokia, and Samsung. After producing the touch screen for the first-generation Apple iPhone in 2007, Lens Technology became the dominant player in the industry. It went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in March 2015, 22 years after Qunfei founded the company. She was named the world's richest self-made woman in 2018 with a net worth of $9.8 billion. Forbes ranked her as the world's 16th richest woman overall, with all of those above her appearing to have inherited or married into their wealth.