Successful female entrepreneurs rarely have an easy ride to fame and fortune.
So many motivational quotes from female entrepreneurs touch on facing rejection, working hard and never giving up.
If you’re a female entrepreneur, the bad news is you’re going to face challenges and you’ll likely be figuring the next steps out for yourself. The good news is there are hundreds of female entrepreneurs who’ve been in your shoes and still carried on going.
Some of these female entrepreneurs started with nothing and still went on to make millions.
Nothing is impossible.
Below, we’ve selected 25 female entrepreneur quotes to give you the motivation to follow your dream until it becomes your reality.
25 Female Entrepreneur Quotes
1. Madam C.J. Walker
The first female self-made millionaire in the United States of America, and the wealthiest African-American businesswoman of her time, after developing and marketing cosmetics and hair care products for black women in the early 20th century. For most of her working life she was a laundress earning barely a dollar a day.
2. Estée Lauder
American entrepreneur, co-founder of Estée Lauder and the only woman on Time magazine’s 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century.
3. Coco Chanel
French fashion designer who founded the Chanel brand and Chanel No. 5 fragrance.
4. Weili Dai
The only female co-founder of a major semiconductor company – Marvell Technology Group
5. Robin Chase
American transportation entrepreneur. Robin Chase founded Zipcar, Buzzcar and GoLoco.org
6. Sara Blakely
Founder of Spanx, an American intimate apparel company. Blakely managed marketing, logistics and product positioning for Spanx after graduating with a degree in communication and scoring very low on The Law School Admission Test. She worked as a stand-up comedian, sold fax machines door-to-door and then had her design for pantyhose turned away by nearly every hosiery mill in America. She now has a net worth over $1.3 billion.
7. Leah Busque
Founder of neighbourhood outsourcing marketplace TaskRabbit, which she scaled to 44 cities in the United States and raised more than $50 million before IKEA acquired the business in 2017.
8. Lori Greiner
American TV personality, Lori Greiner is also well known as an inventor, entrepreneur and investor on the reality TV show Shark Tank.
9. Denise Coates
British billionaire who founded online gambling company Bet365. Coates purchased the domain name Bet365.com in January 2000 and spent a year building the website herself before a successful launch.
10. Melanie Perkins
Australian technology entrepreneur who founded Canva after having an idea to make the design process simpler while teaching private students graphic design. Canva has 41% female representation among employees – higher than the 28% industry average.
11. Cristina Junqueira
Co-founder of Nubank and Brazil’s second-ever self-made female entrepreneur billionaire. Junquiera worked at Unibanco – Brazil’s largest private banking group – before feeling she was only ‘making the rich richer’. ‘Nu’ means ‘nude’ in Portuguese and references a passion for making banking more transparent.
12. Jennifer Hyman
CEO and co-founder of Rent the Runway, which focuses on renting high-end clothing and accessories.
13. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Indian billionaire entrepreneur who founded Biocon, India’s largest biopharmaceutical company.
14. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
See above
15. Cindy Mi
Chinese-born co-founder of ABC English language training institute and founder and CEO of online language tuition platform VIPKid. Cindy Mi taught herself English from age 15 – VIPKid now has 1 million students, 100,000 students and venture capital backing.
16. Debbi Fields
Founder of Mrs. Fields Bakeries, one of the largest retailers of freshly baked, on-premises specialty cookies and brownies in the United States.
17. Michelle Zatlyn
Co-founder of CloudFlare, an American content delivery network with annual revenue over $600 million.
18. Arianna Huffington
Co-founder of The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington later went on to found Thrive Global.
19. Oprah Winfrey
American talk show host, producer, actress, author and philanthropist – famous as the richest African-American of the 20th century after being born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother. Oprah Winfrey landed a radio talkshow job at the age of 19 and soon after launched her own production company in Chicago.
20. Katia Beauchamp
Co-founder and CEO of Birchbox, a NYC-based online monthly subscription service that sends subscribers a box of selected makeup samples.
21. Lillian Vernon
Founder of Lillian Vernon Corporation, a catalogue merchant and online retailer that was the first company founded by a woman to trade on the American Stock Exchange.
21. Lillian Vernon
Founder of Lillian Vernon Corporation, a catalogue merchant and online retailer that was the first company founded by a woman to trade on the American Stock Exchange.
23. Marissa Mayer
American investor and co-founder of Sunshine, a company focused on AI and consumer media. Mayer served as president and CEO of Yahoo! And an executive for Google.
24. Ruth Fertel
Louisiana entrepreneur famous for founding Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses in 1965. Fertel left school at 15 and after becoming a single mother dreamed of sending her two sons to college. When she saw a restaurant for sale that had opened on the very day she was born, she ignored the advice of bankers, lawyers and friends as she remortgaged her house and bought the six-times failing restaurant. She knew nothing of the industry. Within six months, she made double her previous annual salary. She made a point of staffing single mothers and enjoyed regular celebrity guests – with bodyguards – like Fats Domino.
25. Caterina Fake
Co-founder of photo sharing platform Flickr and Hunch. Caterina Fake is also an investor and podcast host.
Female Entrepreneurs in Europe
Women make up just 34.4% of self-employed workers in the European Union – while just 14% of start-ups are headed my female enterpreneurs.
This is despite women making up 52% of the EU population.
The European Investment Bank (the world-s largest multilateral financial institution) found that European firms with strong female representation are 28% more likely to outperform their peers, while firms with strong female representation at executive levels are 25% more likely to outperform their peers.
You can read more about how Spain, Germany, France and Italy are helping female entrepreneurs access more funding and support to build the European economy on our Work Life pages:
Female Entrepreneurs Network – MumAbroad
MumAbroad actively supports female entrepreneurs in key local communities in Spain, Italy, France and Germany – countries with the largest economies in the EU.
We strive to provide a platform for female entrepreneurs in Europe, especially for women who may have been out of the workplace due to family commitments and are trying to establish themselves again.
MumAbroad is the go-to platform for female entrepreneurs in each of our countries, with regular and relevant content and a thriving community on social media. Our Women in Business pages give a platform for solopreneurs, mumpreneurs, women working in start-ups, as directors or CEOs in Spain, Germany, France and Italy.
Contact us as info@mumabroad.com if you’d like to inquire about our services and have your female-led business listed on our country-specific pages.
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