Edited By Alex Knapp and Luisa Kroll, Forbes Staff

Reported By Jessica Jacolbe and Chase Peterson-Withorn

Grit. Hustle. Resilience. The American Dream is built on the audacious belief that anyone can make it to the top. Every elementary school kid is imbued with the belief that anyone can become president of the United States. Or a hip-hop megastar. Or a space-faring billionaire. The notion is as old as the Republic and stands self-consciously in contrast to class-ridden Europe where one’s prospects were often determined at birth.

This ideal has always had its heroes: from Alexander Hamilton, the orphaned immigrant who crafted America’s first financial system, to Andrew Carnegie, who went from working as a young teen in a textile mill to forging a vast steel empire. Since 1917, it has been the prime subject matter of this publication. So, in honor of America’s semiquincentennial, we feel uniquely qualified to rank the 250 greatest living self-made Americans. (Our list of the 250 greatest historical ones will be released on Friday).

To identify these revolutionaries, we first mined Forbes’ 109-year-deep archive for classic tales of entrepreneurial capitalism. Then we asked our current crop of beat reporters for their ideas. We canvassed AI, running hundreds of queries through both ChatGPT and Gemini. While we put a heavy emphasis on rags-to-riches billionaires, we also included pioneering scientists, Supreme Court justices and others whose “wealth” is measured in influence and impact, not just dollar signs.

Next, we ran names past a panel of expert judges: DeAngela Burns-Wallace, CEO of the Kauffman Foundation; Keith Dunleavy, Founder, Inovalon; Rich Karlgaard, Former Publisher, Forbes; Steven Klinsky, Founder and CEO, New Mountain Capital; Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Block (formerly Square); and Ryan Rippel, CEO of NextLadder Ventures.

An invaluable resource was Forbes’ Self-Made Score, a 1-to-10 ranking that quantifies the “distance traveled” by each individual—separating those who started with nothing from those with a big head start. Only those ranking nine or ten made the cut. The final ranking encompasses financial success, obstacles overcome and enduring impact.

The Greatest Self-Made Americans

#1. Oprah Winfrey, 72 ★

Born to a teen mother, Winfrey grew up on a rural Mississippi farm without indoor plumbing. At 9 she was raped by a cousin; at 14 she gave birth to a son, who died soon thereafter. Thanks to a federal program, she attended a rich suburban school where she discovered a knack for public speaking and debate, which earned her a part-time radio gig and, later, a scholarship to Tennessee State University. In 1984 she took over a struggling morning talk show in Chicago and eventually turned it into a national media brand.

#2. Harold Hamm, 80 ★

The 13th child of Oklahoma sharecroppers, Hamm’s earliest memory is picking tomatoes with his bare feet in the red Oklahoma dirt. He eventually started his own trucking company hauling water to and from oilfields, then in 1971 took out a loan to drill his first well. The fracking pioneer helped turn the U.S. into the world’s biggest oil producer.

#3. David Steward, 74 ★

His father worked as a mechanic, janitor and trash collector to support eight children. Growing up in segregated Missouri, Steward was part of a group that pushed his town to integrate its swimming pools as a teenager. He walked on to his high school basketball team and earned a college scholarship. Even after he first cofounded World Wide Technology, now one of the largest IT services companies on the planet, he sometimes went without a paycheck and once watched his car get repossessed.

#4. Thomas Peterffy, 81 ★

In 1965, a 21-year-old Peterffy arrived at John F. Kennedy airport nearly penniless after fleeing Communist Hungary, hoping to live with his father. Turned away with $100, he got a job as a programmer and eventually saved enough to buy a seat on the American Stock Exchange. He went on to pioneer automated digital trading with his firm Interactive Brokers.

#5. LeBron James, 41 ★

His teen mom struggled to find steady work or a stable home, leading to him moving a dozen times in three years. At 9, the fatherless Akron, Ohio native moved in with the family of a local football coach, who introduced him to basketball. Drafted to the pros in 2003 right out of high school, he became the first active NBA player to become a billionaire.

After immigrating at age 16 from Ukraine to Mountain View, California, Koum and his mom moved into a small two-bedroom with government assistance. He signed the deal to sell WhatsApp, which he cofounded, to Meta at the same building where he once stood in line to collect food stamps.

The country singer grew up “dirt poor” with her 11 siblings in a Tennessee shack without running water or electricity. She moved to Nashville after high school, using her songwriting talent to pen top 10 hits for the likes of Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. before becoming a star in her own right.

Clinton, whose father died before he was born, was determined to become president of the United States from an early age, despite growing up in a household afflicted by poverty and domestic abuse. He later got a scholarship to Georgetown University, won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and attended Yale Law School. He became a law professor before being elected Arkansas attorney general, then governor, then the 42nd president.

#9. Diane Hendricks, 79 ★

Hendricks became a teen mother at age 17, forcing her to drop out of school. She later worked as a Playboy Bunny to support her child before meeting her second husband, Ken. The pair cofounded ABC Supply, one of the world’s largest construction supply firms, and ran it together until 2007, when he died after falling through a roof where he was checking construction.

Raised in Ohio’s Rust Belt, Vance faced financial struggles and family instability due to his absent father and his mother’s drug addiction. Raised by his grandmother, who owned 19 handguns and provided tough love, he served in the Iraq War as a Marine, then earned a law degree from Yale and became a venture capitalist. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, garnered national attention, and he was elected to the Senate in 2022 and became vice president of the U.S. in 2025.

#11. Larry Ellison, 81 ★

Ellison’s unmarried, 19-year-old mom gave him up for adoption at nine months after he contracted pneumonia. He was raised by his great aunt and uncle, who lost his real estate business in the Great Depression and made a modest living as an auditor for the public housing authority. He later dropped out of college twice before becoming a tech titan.

#12. George Soros, 95 ★

He survived Hungary’s Nazi occupation as a child and put himself through the London School of Economics working as a railway porter and waiter on his way to becoming one of the world’s most influential financiers.

#13. Donald Friese, 85 ★

Orphaned as a child, Friese worked on a dairy farm at age 12 before enlisting in the Army. After a three-year tour of duty, he moved to California with $125 and landed a job at the warehouse of C.R. Laurence, which he eventually took over and then sold for $1.3 billion in cash in 2015.

#14. David Walentas, 87 ★

As child farmworkers, he and his brother were “something between an orphan and an indentured servant.” (see “Six Lessons From A Billionaire Who Once Sold His Blood To Buy Food”)

#15. Howard Schultz, 72 ★

Schultz grew up in a Brooklyn housing project. When he was 7, his dad, a cloth diaper delivery driver, fell on the job; he had no insurance or salary. The first person in his family to graduate from college, Schultz attended Northern Michigan University on a football scholarship. He joined a small company called Starbucks in the 1980s; the rest is history.

#16. Clarence Thomas, 77

His father deserted his family when he was very young. His mother sent Thomas, age 7 at the time, and his younger brother, Myers, to live with their maternal grandparents in Savannah, providing more stability but no indoor plumbing. Educated at a segregated Catholic school, he went on to Yale Law School and, in 1991, the Supreme Court of the United States.

#17. Bob Parsons, 75 ★

The child of hardcore gamblers, Parsons grew up “poor as a church mouse” in inner-city Baltimore. School was no refuge as he failed 5th grade and almost flunked 12th. Enlisting in the Marines, he was sent to Vietnam in 1969. He came back with PTSD but with focus. He taught himself to code and started several businesses, including web hosting firm GoDaddy.com, which he eventually sold to investors including KKR.

Raised in Brooklyn’s notorious Marcy housing projects, Jay-Z was a drug dealer before becoming a musician. He cofounded his own music label when nobody would give him a record deal for his debut album.

#19. Sonia Sotomayor, 71

Sotomayor grew up in a Bronx housing project. She was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at age 7. Her father died when she was 9. After attending Catholic schools, she made it to Princeton, where she easily qualified for financial aid given that her family didn’t have a bank account. She became a Supreme Court Justice in 2009.

The rapper cut grass to buy shoes when he was a kid. “I would do what I had to do.” (see “Dr. Dre On Becoming A Billionaire”)

#21. Shahid Khan, 75 ★

The Pakistani immigrant arrived with $500 in his pocket and worked nights as a dishwasher while studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He later designed a one-piece truck bumper, the basis of his $15 billion fortune.

#22. Dennis Washington, 91 ★

Montana’s wealthiest citizen survived childhood polio, lived in government housing during World War II and shined shoes as a kid to make pocket money.

#23. Magic Johnson, 66 ★

The NBA star was raised in a working-class family with nine siblings in a three-bedroom apartment. He retired from the NBA in 1991 after being diagnosed with HIV. Nearly all of his fortune comes from post-basketball business ventures.

#24. John Paul DeJoria, 81 ★

The cofounder of hair care company John Paul Mitchell Systems and high-end tequila Patrón Spirits Company, DeJoria spent time in foster care and twice was homeless, living out of his car.

#25. Tyler Perry, 56 ★

The once-homeless, “poor as hell” producer and director dealt with more than just poverty growing up in New Orleans; he describes an upbringing by an abusive man he later learned was not his father. Inspired to write out his stress, he dropped out of high school and started performing the plays he wrote in small theaters.

#26. Ralph Lauren, 86 ★

Before he was a fashion mogul, Lauren shared a two-bedroom Bronx apartment with his immigrant parents and three siblings.

#27. Noubar Afeyan, 63 ★

With his family, the healthcare entrepreneur and venture capitalist fled Lebanon in the 1970s; they rebuilt in Montreal from scratch.

#28. Herbert Wertheim, 86 ★

The child runaway faced truancy charges at age 16 but was given the choice between reformatory school or the Navy. He joined the latter on his way to becoming a successful optometrist-inventor-investor.

#29. Henry Samueli, 71 ★

The son of Polish Holocaust survivors who moved to America with next to nothing, Samueli spent his childhood helping at his parents’ modest liquor store before falling in love with engineering and cofounding semiconductor giant Broadcom.

#30. Harry Stine, 84 ★

The soybean billionaire grew up on a farm and struggled with dyslexia before unlocking his talent for genetics.

#31. Daniel D'Aniello, 79 ★

The Carlyle Group cofounder started bagging groceries as a child to help his single mother, who worked four jobs, make ends meet.

#32. Dick Portillo, 86 ★

The hot dog tycoon grew up in public housing.

#33. David Geffen, 83 ★

The Hollywood titan was born to working-class immigrant parents and started in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency.

#34. Yvon Chouinard, 87

Chouinard hails from a working-class background and spent much of his 20s rock climbing, living out of his car on 50 cents a day and even eating squirrels before founding Patagonia, which he famously gave away to fight climate change.

#35. Igor Olenicoff, 83 ★

The real-estate kingpin’s family fled the Soviet Union for Iran, where Olenicoff was born, and arrived in the U.S. with........

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