Rose Blumkin

Rose Gorelick was born in 1893 in a village near Minsk, one of eight children of a rabbi, and slept on a straw mattress in a two-room house. She never went to school. At thirteen she walked to the nearest town and got a job in a dry goods shop, and by sixteen was managing it with six men under her.

She married Isadore Blumkin in 1914, and he left for America to escape the Tsar's army. In 1917 she followed, crossing Siberia on the Trans-Siberian railway and telling a border guard she was buying leather for the army and would bring him a bottle of vodka on her return. She reached Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919, learning English from her daughter's school lessons.

In 1937, aged 43, she borrowed 500 dollars and opened a furniture shop in a basement, selling at ten per cent above cost. Manufacturers and rival shops boycotted her, so she drove to Chicago and Kansas City to buy stock, and when she was taken to court for violating fair-trade laws the judge dismissed the case and bought carpet from her the next day. Nebraska Furniture Mart became the largest home furnishings store in the country.

In 1983 Warren Buffett bought ninety per cent of the business for about 55 million dollars on a handshake, without an audit, and said she was the best businessperson he had ever met. In 1989, aged 95 and after a quarrel with her grandsons, she quit and opened a rival shop across the street, Mrs B's Warehouse. Buffett bought that too. She worked from a motorised cart until she was 103 and died in 1998 at 104.