JK Rowling One Of The World’s Youngest Female Billionaires

Financial Post:

The youngest self-made female billionaire in the world is Hong Kong citizen Chu Lam Yiu, the 38-year-old head of Huabao International, which makes fragrances and flavorings for cigarettes, detergents, beverages, dairy products and cosmetics. Chu still heads the company, which she started a decade ago and which went public through a backdoor listing.

Chinese billionaire Zhang Xin, 43, worked in a factory stitching apparel in Hong Kong at age 14 before eventually getting a master’s at Cambridge University. Today she and her husband Pan Shiyi run one of China’s most successful property developers, SOHO China, known for its sleek and modern buildings across the country.

Russian Elena Baturina, also a former factory worker, isn’t in business with her husband, Yuri Luzkhov, but his position as Moscow’s mayor probably hasn’t hurt her company. Baturina founded Inteko in 1991, and it later became one of

the city’s biggest construction companies. Inteko sued the publisher of Forbes Russia over a December 2006 cover story about the company. The court ruled in Inteko’s favor.

The most famous of these young billionaire entrepreneurs is British novelist Joanne (J.K.) Rowling, 42, formerly a struggling single mother who lived on welfare. That was before she penned the immensely popular Harry Potter series about a boy wizard and eventually transformed herself into the world’s only billionaire author.