Diane Hendricks was born on March 2, 1947, making her 78 year old. She was born on a dairy farm in Osseo, Wisconsin. As per CNBC, at 10 years old Diane realised she ‘didn’t want to be a farmer nor did she want to marry one’.
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She explained that she pictured herself wearing ‘a blue suit and having a nice car and being independent’. Hendricks then went on to become America’s wealthiest self-made woman, however, it wasn’t an easy journey for her to achieve.
Diane Hendricks’s journey to America’s wealthiest self-made woman
As per CNBC, Diane Hendricks fell pregnant at the age of 17 and graduated high school while still living at home. Three years later, she divorced her high school sweetheart and worked odd jobs as a single mother, one of her jobs included being a Playboy Bunny waitress at the infamous club. At the same time, she started working on her real estate career, she explained:
That’s when I really started to look at a career, a career I’d always dreamt of having, which was being in business.
In the seventies, Diane met and married roof contractor Ken Hendricks and in 1982 the two founded ABC Supply, a wholesale distributer of roofing and other building products. As per the company’s website, ABC Supply made $1 billion in annual sales for the first time in 1998.
However, Diane and the company ran into some controversy in 2016, when Diane first topped America’s Richest Self-Made Women list. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had reported that Diane hadn’t ‘paid a dime in state income tax from 2012 through 2014’. In 2022, ABC Supply tax director Scott Bianchini told CNBC that it ‘wasn’t necessarily illegal’.
As per Rolling Stone, Diane Hendricks has been named on Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women list for seven years in a row and has a net worth of $20 billion. Diane Hendricks has used some of her fortune to support Donald Trump.
Diane Hendricks supports Donald Trump
As mentioned above, Diane Hendricks donated millions to support President Donald Trump, who survived an assassination atempt, for his political rise in 2016. According to Rolling Stone Hendricks had played a key role in Trump’s win in Wisconsin.
During Trump’s 2016 election campaign, the former waitress donated $8 million to the Reform America Fund, which then used $305 million to attack Trump’s opponent at the time, Hillary Clinton.
Moreover, during the 2016 and 2020 elections, Hendricks donated $1.4 million to the Trump Victory Committee. Then in 2020, she donated $4 million to America First Action, the primary pro-Trump Super PAC.
During the most recent presidential election, which Trump won, Diane Hendricks showed her support once again and was one of the speakers at the Republican National Convention.
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Sources used:
Rolling Stone: ‘The RNC Is Calling This Billionaire Trump Donor an ‘Everyday American’’
Forbes: ‘America’s Richest Self-Made Women’
Forbes: ‘Diane Hendricks’
New York Post: ‘Ex-Playboy Bunny, America’s wealthiest self-made woman Diane Hendricks to address RNC tonight: ‘Had a pulse on everything’
CNBC: ‘America’s richest self-made woman grew up on a dairy farm—now she has a net worth of $20.9 billion’
