Diane Hendricks: From a Wisconsin Dairy Farm to a $21 Billion Empire

Early Life & Family Origins

Diane Marie Hendricks was born Diane Marie Smith on March 2, 1947, in Mondovi, Wisconsin, and was raised in nearby Osseo, Wisconsin. Her parents were dairy farmers, and she grew up on the family farm as one of nine sisters (some accounts count eight sisters alongside her, for nine daughters total). At just seventeen, Diane had her first child; her relationship with the child’s father was short-lived and ended in divorce. To support herself and her child, she took a job assembling pens at the Parker Pen Company in Janesville, Wisconsin, and — as she has spoken about publicly — also worked for a time as a Playboy Bunny.

Education Foundations

Hendricks graduated from Osseo-Fairchild High School in 1965. She did not pursue a college degree, and her formal education is generally listed simply as a high school diploma — a striking contrast to the multibillion-dollar enterprise she would go on to build.

Real Estate Career & Meeting Ken Hendricks Late 1960s–1975

At the age of 21, Diane became interested in real estate and earned her broker’s license, going on to sell custom-built homes for a builder. It was through this work that she met Ken Hendricks, a roofing contractor and Janesville native who had dropped out of high school to join his father’s roofing business, eventually building his own operation into a 500-man, multi-state roofing company by the time he was in his late twenties.

Marriage & Early Business Partnership 1975–1982

Diane married Ken Hendricks in 1975, and the two quickly became business partners as well as spouses — a partnership Diane later described by saying, “we’d worked together every day since I was 21.” Together, they began buying old houses around Beloit, Wisconsin, fixing them up, and renting them out, before moving on to do the same with industrial properties in the area.

Founding ABC Supply 1982

Tired of dealing with multiple building-supply vendors scattered around the country, Ken and Diane started American Builders and Contractors Supply Co., Inc. — ABC Supply Co. Inc. — in 1982, purchasing three failing Bird & Sons supply locations to launch the venture. The company grew quickly: by 1987, ABC had expanded to 50 stores and $183 million in annual sales. Growing up in the Hendricks household meant growing up in the business — several of the couple’s children eventually took on vice-president roles at the company, while Diane retained the company’s controlling voting shares. Ken, an extrovert and motivational speaker, became the company’s public face, while Diane managed its finances. In 1998, when ABC Supply’s sales passed $1 billion, the couple hired David Luck, a former president at Bridgestone/Firestone, to run day-to-day operations, freeing Ken and Diane to oversee roughly 30 additional smaller companies — spanning steel and aluminum products, waste management, and insurance — under their broader Hendricks Holding umbrella. By 2006, ABC Supply’s annual revenues had climbed to about $3 billion, and the company employed nearly 6,000 people across 350 locations in 47 states.

Ken Hendricks’s Death December 2007

On the night of December 20, 2007, Ken Hendricks — then 66 years old — returned home late from a business event to the couple’s home near Afton, Wisconsin, where construction was underway on a new floor above the garage. Going out to inspect the work, he stepped onto tarps covering an unfinished section and fell through into the garage below, landing on concrete and suffering massive head injuries. Diane found him, called for help, and attempted CPR before emergency responders arrived; Ken was taken first to Beloit Memorial Hospital and then transferred to Rockford Memorial Hospital in Illinois, where he died in surgery early on the morning of December 21, 2007. He was survived by Diane and their seven children. At the time of his death, Ken Hendricks was estimated by Forbes to be worth roughly $2.6–3.5 billion and was the third-richest person in Wisconsin.

Taking the Helm & the Bradco Acquisition 2007–2010

Following Ken’s death, David Luck pressed Diane on where she wanted to steer the company; she chose to become chairman, promoting Luck to chief executive while retaining final authority herself. The timing was brutal: the Great Recession and collapsing housing market hit ABC Supply hard, with sales declining roughly 7 percent between 2006 and 2009. Rather than retreat, Hendricks looked for opportunity in the downturn, targeting Bradco Supply — one of ABC’s top competitors, with about 130 stores and roughly $1.5 billion in sales, which had recently been sold to private equity firm Advent International and faced an uncertain future amid fire-sale conditions.

Hendricks and Luck began negotiating with Bradco in early 2009. To finance the deal, Diane gave up 40 percent of her stake in ABC Supply to a financial backer, on the condition that she could buy it back within five years — a risk she later said gave her “shivers,” given her fear of jeopardizing the company she wanted her children to eventually run. The Bradco acquisition, announced in May 2010, was the largest in ABC Supply’s history to that point, creating a combined company with 480 stores across 45 states and Washington, D.C., and sales expected to exceed $4 billion that year. Hendricks ultimately bought back her stake within four years.

Becoming Sole Owner & Further Growth 2013–Present

In 2013, Hendricks bought out ABC Supply’s remaining minority shareholders — including private equity firms Advent International and Apollo Global Management, along with Bradco Supply’s prior owners — for a combined price of about $1.4 billion, according to Moody’s Investors Service, making her the company’s sole owner. In 2016, under her leadership, ABC Supply made the second-biggest acquisition in its history, purchasing building-materials distributor L&W Supply.

Today, ABC Supply is the largest wholesale distributor of roofing materials in the United States and a leading distributor of siding, windows, gutters, wallboard, metal framing, and ceiling tiles, with more than 900 (and by some counts over 1,000) branch locations across the U.S. and Canada, roughly 20,000 employees, and $20.2 billion in 2025 revenue — up from $12.1 billion in 2020. The company has ranked among Forbes’ list of America’s largest private companies (No. 18 in 2024, No. 21 in 2023), and has earned 18 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Awards and two Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards for Best Places to Work.

Hendricks Holding Company Diversified Portfolio

Diane and Ken founded Hendricks Holding Co., Inc. in 2001 to manage their private-equity investments outside of ABC Supply, and Diane continues to serve as its chairman. The holding company presides over a diverse portfolio of businesses spanning manufacturing, distribution, real estate development, construction, recycling, trucking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences. According to her profile at Hendricks Holding, all of Diane’s pursuits “are guided by her strong patriotic and conservative values,” and she has described herself as passionate about civic responsibility.

Hollywood Producer Film & Television

Beyond building supplies, Hendricks has also built a career as a film producer. As of December 2025, she had worked as an executive producer on four movies and three television series, including the films The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008), An American Carol (2008), and Snowmen (2010).

Civic & Charitable Involvement in Beloit Community

Hendricks has poured significant resources into revitalizing Beloit, Wisconsin, over nearly three decades — restoring the abandoned, run-down Fairbanks-Morse industrial complex to house ABC Supply’s headquarters, buying and redeveloping the vacant buildings of the defunct Beloit Corp., renovating entire blocks along State Street and East Grand Avenue, building ABC Supply Stadium for the Beloit Snappers minor-league baseball team, and breaking ground in 2020 on The Lincoln Academy, a new charter school for low-income students. Her family’s construction firm, Corporate Contractors Inc. (CCI), has carried out many of these projects, including funding the renovation of a former post office and public library into the Hendricks Center for the Arts. In total, her investment in Beloit’s revitalization has been estimated at more than $100 million.

She has served as a board member of WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network, an organization aimed at providing access to public policy debate and the decision-making process without editing, commentary, or analysis, and with a balanced presentation of points of view. She sits on the advisory council of Rock County 5.0, an economic development initiative, and serves as a trustee of the Stateline Boys & Girls Club. Her other civic and charitable affiliations include Beloit Memorial Hospital, the Beloit Foundation, Blackhawk Bank (a community bank headquartered in Beloit), the Hendricks Family Foundation, and Forward Janesville, a private economic development organization. She was also formerly a board member of Kandu Industries, a now-closed company that employed and trained developmentally disabled adults.

Beloit College Board & Resignation 2011–2020

Hendricks joined the Beloit College Board of Trustees in 2011. In September 2020, she resigned from the board along with three other longtime trustees — Jim Packard, Chuck McQuaid, and Jim Sanger — in a sudden, unexplained move. The college attributed the departures only to “regular turnover,” citing years of support that included completing the Powerhouse student union and recreation center project and helping finalize a five-year financial plan. No official reason was given, though some accounts have linked her departure to a dispute over a Black Lives Matter flag displayed on the Powerhouse building, or to the college’s new anti-racism Statement of Culture issued around the same time.

Political Contributions & Campaigns Republican Politics

Hendricks is widely regarded as the largest individual political donor in the state of Wisconsin and was the top Republican donor in the state during the 2024 election cycle. She has supported Wisconsin Republicans including Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, along with the Republican National Committee more broadly. In 2008 and 2009, she and ABC Supply contributed nearly $150,000 to Republican candidates and organizations.

She backed Scott Walker through both of his gubernatorial campaigns, donating $500,000 in 2012 to help him fend off a recall election — at the time, the largest single donation ever given to a Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, making her his biggest donor that year. In January 2011, she was recorded telling Walker she wanted to help him turn Wisconsin into a “Right to Work” state, in a conversation that surfaced publicly around the same period Walker was separately caught on tape describing plans to “divide and conquer” public-sector unions.

Her political giving accelerated in the years that followed: $1 million to the Koch-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund in 2014, followed by $2 million more in both 2015 and 2016; $5 million in 2015 to a Super PAC associated with Scott Walker’s short-lived 2016 presidential campaign (of which $4 million was ultimately refunded after Walker dropped out); and more than $5–8 million in the 2016 cycle to the Reform America Fund, a Super PAC that opposed Hillary Clinton and supported Ron Johnson’s re-election, with spending concentrated in Wisconsin, where Clinton narrowly lost the state. She served as an economic advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and donated $50,000 to the Scott Pruitt Legal Expenses Trust shortly before Pruitt’s 2018 resignation as EPA administrator. Across the 2016 and 2020 election cycles she donated a combined $1.4 million to the Trump Victory committee, and in 2020 she separately donated $4 million to the pro-Trump group America First Action and contributed a total of $1.1 million directly to Trump’s re-election campaign. As of 2023, she had contributed $5 million to the Super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc. She has also contributed to the campaign of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

On the closing night of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Hendricks — billed on the program as an “everyday American” despite her billionaire status — delivered a five-minute speech recounting her path from teenage single mother to business titan, telling delegates “if I can make it, you can make it, too,” and declaring “we need a builder back in the White House.”

Tax Benefits & Property Controversies Scrutiny

Hendricks has faced repeated public scrutiny over her taxes. Reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found she paid no Wisconsin state income tax in four out of five years between 2010 and 2014. Separately, ProPublica reported that Hendricks benefited enormously from a pass-through business provision in President Trump’s 2017 tax law, which was designed to benefit owners of large real-estate holdings organized through LLCs: in the law’s first year, she received a $97 million deduction against $502 million in income, saving an estimated $36 million in taxes — among the largest such benefits reported for any individual in the country, alongside the Uihlein family, owners of packaging giant Uline.

A 2017 investigation by Urban Milwaukee found that Hendricks’s roughly 8,500-square-foot home on a 228-acre, 14-parcel property in the Town of Rock, Wisconsin, had been assessed by local authorities as a 1,663-square-foot ranch home. Hendricks initially denied the tax assessor access to the property, citing security concerns, but after she agreed to supply data about the home, its assessed value was raised from $445,700 to $1,205,500.

Awards & Recognition Honors

Hendricks received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2002 and the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Woman of the Year Award in 2007. Forbes first named her America’s richest self-made woman in 2018, a title she has gone on to hold for numerous consecutive years running — reported at seven years by mid-2024, and eight or nine years by 2025–2026, depending on the specific ranking cited. In 2022, Forbes went further, calling her “the most successful female entrepreneur in American history.” She has also been recognized as the wealthiest individual in the state of Wisconsin.

“Betting on Beloit” & Media Presence Public Profile

Despite generally avoiding the spotlight, Hendricks has become the subject of increasing media attention in recent years. In 2023, author Alex Grant published Unstoppable: The Extraordinary Biography of Diane Hendricks. Forbes also produced a 22-minute documentary, Becoming America’s Richest Self-Made Woman: How Diane Hendricks Built Her ABC Supply Empire.

In July 2025, the A&E network premiered Betting on Beloit, a 12-episode reality series featuring Hendricks and centered more directly on her daughter, Konya Hendricks Schuh, a licensed real estate broker and interior designer. The show follows Konya and her team — including her husband Matt Schuh, a plumbing contractor and former home builder; project manager Pete Woodkey; her realtor nephew Connor Fox; and designers Kristin and Mitch — as they purchase, restore, and reimagine historic homes in Beloit’s College Hill neighborhood through Beloit College Park LLC, a Hendricks-owned entity, with construction carried out by the family’s firm, Corporate Contractors Inc. Diane, who finances the venture, appears throughout the series and has said of the project, “I just want to give back to the community that gave us a chance.”

Personal Life & Family Family

Diane Hendricks has seven children in total. Her eldest, son Brent Fox, was born from her first relationship before she met Ken Hendricks; Brent now serves as CEO of Hendricks Holding Company. With Ken Hendricks, she had six more children — Kendra, Kim, Kathy, Kevin, Kara, and Konya (Hendricks Schuh) — five daughters and one son in total across her family. Konya, a real estate broker and interior designer featured in “Betting on Beloit,” is married to Matt Schuh, a plumbing contractor, and their daughter Addison Schuh has also appeared on the show. Diane’s grandchildren include Connor Fox (Brent’s son, a realtor also featured on “Betting on Beloit”), Addison Schuh, and Skylar Simone, among others; contemporary accounts from shortly after Ken’s death referenced as many as 17 grandchildren in the extended family. Hendricks resides in Afton, Wisconsin, and holds United States citizenship.

Net Worth Through the Years Wealth

Diane Hendricks’s fortune has grown dramatically alongside ABC Supply’s expansion. Forbes estimated her net worth at $2.8 billion in March 2012, rising to nearly $5 billion by 2016, roughly $8 billion in the years that followed, and $11.1 billion by August 2021. By 2024, her net worth was reported at approximately $20.9–21.9 billion, and by December 2025, Forbes ranked her 108th on its list of the world’s richest people with a net worth of about $22.33 billion — making her, by some counts, the No. 1 or No. 2 name on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women and the wealthiest person in Wisconsin. More recent tracking places her net worth at roughly $21.69 billion, a decrease of about $643.7 million from the 2025 figure, ranking her around 122nd globally among billionaires and 51st within the United States. Current estimates generally range between $21.7 billion and $22.3 billion, and she continues to be recognized as the richest self-made woman in the United States.

Significance & Legacy Impact

Diane Hendricks’s rise — from a teenage mother on a Wisconsin dairy farm to the chair of the nation’s largest wholesale roofing distributor and America’s richest self-made woman — stands as one of the more striking entrepreneurial stories in American business. Her decision to take full control of ABC Supply after her husband’s sudden death, rather than sell or step back, transformed the company from a regional building-supply business into a multibillion-dollar national empire. Beyond business, she has become one of the most significant Republican political donors in Wisconsin and national politics, while also building a lesser-known parallel career as a film and television producer.

Quick Facts At a Glance

Milestone Timeline Journey

Frequently Asked Questions FAQ

Who is Diane Hendricks?
Diane Hendricks is an American businesswoman who co-founded ABC Supply Co. Inc. with her late husband Ken Hendricks in 1982, and who now serves as the company’s chair and sole owner, recognized as the richest self-made woman in the United States.

What is Diane Hendricks’s net worth?
Estimates place her net worth at roughly $21.7 billion to $22.3 billion as of 2026, up from about $2.8 billion in 2012 and $11.1 billion in 2021, as ABC Supply has grown.

What is ABC Supply?
ABC Supply Co. Inc., based in Beloit, Wisconsin, is the largest wholesale distributor of roofing in the United States and a leading distributor of siding, windows, gutters, and other exterior building products, with more than 900 locations and about $20.2 billion in 2025 revenue.

Did Diane Hendricks always run ABC Supply alone?
No — she co-founded and co-ran the company with her husband Ken Hendricks until his death in December 2007, after which she became chairman, later buying out ABC Supply’s remaining minority shareholders in 2013 to become its sole owner.

How did Ken Hendricks die?
He died on December 21, 2007, at age 66, after falling through an unfinished section of flooring above the garage of the couple’s Afton, Wisconsin home, which was under construction at the time.

Has Diane Hendricks worked outside of business?
Yes. She has executive-produced several films, including The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008), An American Carol (2008), and Snowmen (2010), was the subject of the 2023 biography Unstoppable, and appears in the 2025 A&E reality series “Betting on Beloit” alongside her daughter Konya Hendricks Schuh.

What tax and property controversies has Diane Hendricks faced?
Reports revealed she paid no Wisconsin state income tax in four of five years between 2010 and 2014, that her Rock County home had initially been under-assessed before a reassessment raised its value, and that she benefited from roughly $36 million in tax savings under a provision of Trump’s 2017 tax law, according to ProPublica.