7 Billionaires Who Started Out Dirt Poor

When in need of inspiration from real life rags-to-riches tales, look to these CEOs.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

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Some of the world's wealthiest people started out dirt poor. These 17 rags-to-riches stories remind us that through determination, grit, and a little bit of luck anyone can overcome their circumstances and achieve extraordinary success. 

 

This is an update of a story originally written by Vivian Giang.

1. Russian business tycoon and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich was born into poverty and orphaned at age 2.

Net worth: $8.2 billion

Abramovich was born in southern Russia, into poverty. After being orphaned at age 2, he was raised by an uncle and his family in a subarctic region of northern Russia. While a student at the Moscow Auto Transport Institute in 1987, he started a small company producing plastic toys, which helped him eventually found an oil business and make a name for himself within the oil industry. Later, as sole leader of the Sibneft company, he completed a merger that made it the fourth biggest oil company in the world. The company was sold to state-run gas titan Gazprom in 2005 for $13 billion.

He acquired the Chelsea Football Club in 2003 and owns the world's largest yacht, which cost him almost $400 million in 2010.

2. Montpellier rugby club president and Entrepreneur of the Year Mohed Altrad survived on one meal a day when he moved to France.

Net worth: $1 billion

Born into a nomadic tribe in the Syrian desert to a poor mother who was raped by his father and died when he was young, Altrad was raised by his grandmother, who banned him from attending school, in Raqqa, the city that is now capital of ISIS.

Altrad attended school anyway, and when he moved to France to attend university, he knew no French and lived off of one meal a day. Still, he earned a PhD in computer science, worked for some leading French companies, and eventually bought a failing scaffolding company, which he transformed into one of the world's leading manufacturers of scaffolding and cement mixers, Altrad Group.

He has previously been named French Entrepreneur of the Year and World Entrepreneur of the Year.

3. Kenny Troutt, the founder of Excel Communications, paid his way through college by selling life insurance.

Net worth: $1.5 billion 

Troutt grew up with a bartender dad and paid for his own tuition at Southern Illinois University by selling life insurance. He made most of his money from phone company Excel Communications, which he founded in 1988 and took public in 1996. Two years later, Troutt merged his company with Teleglobe in a $3.5 billion deal.

He's now retired and invests heavily in racehorses.

4. Starbucks's Howard Schultz grew up in a housing complex for the poor.

Net worth: $2.9 billion

In an interview with British tabloid Mirror, Schultz says: "Growing up I always felt like I was living on the other side of the tracks. I knew the people on the other side had more resources, more money, happier families. And for some reason, I don't know why or how, I wanted to climb over that fence and achieve something beyond what people were saying was possible. I may have a suit and tie on now but I know where I'm from and I know what it's like."

Schultz ended up winning a football scholarship to the University of Northern Michigan and went to work for Xerox after graduation. He then took over a coffee shop called Starbucks, which at the time had only 60 shops. Schultz became the company's CEO in 1987 and grew the coffee chain to more than 16,000 outlets worldwide. 

5. Investor Ken Langone's parents worked as a plumber and cafeteria worker.

Net worth: $2.8 billion 

To help pay for Langone's school at Bucknell University, he worked odd jobs and his parents mortgaged their home.

In 1968, Langone worked with Ross Perot to take Electronic Data Systems public. (It was later acquired by HP.) Just two years later, he partnered with Bernard Marcus to start Home Depot, which also went public, in 1981.

6. Born into poverty, Oprah Winfrey became the first African-American TV correspondent in Tennessee.

Net worth: $3 billion 

Winfrey was born into a poor family in Mississippi, but this didn't stop her from winning a scholarship to Tennessee State University and becoming the first African-American TV correspondent in the state at the age of 19.

In 1983, Winfrey moved to Chicago to work for an AM talk show that would later be called The Oprah Winfrey Show.

7. John Paul DeJoria, the man behind a hair-care empire and Patron Tequila, once lived in a foster home and his car.

Net worth: $2.9 billion

Before the age of 10, DeJoria, a first-generation American, sold Christmas cards and newspapers to help support his family. He was eventually sent to live in a foster home and even spent some time in a gang before joining the military.

With a $700 dollar loan, DeJoria created John Paul Mitchell Systems and sold the shampoo door-to-door while living in his car. He later started Patron Tequila, and now invests in other industries.