Beate Uhse-Rotermund

A former Luftwaffe test pilot left widowed after the war, Uhse began by selling a leaflet on contraception to women in northern Germany in the late 1940s. That grew into a mail-order business for marital aids and then, in 1962 in Flensburg, what is often called the world's first sex shop. She fought thousands of legal complaints, built a chain across Germany and took the company public in 1999. It is an unusual entry, but an undeniably substantial business built from nothing.