Top 10 Australian Female Entrepreneurs

Despite the patriarchy and misogyny (heavy stuff!), Australian female entrepreneurs have still created lucrative careers for themselves. With their hard work, these women were able to accomplish their dreams. Here we are celebrating the lives and achievements of 10 Australian female entrepreneurs. 

10 Remarkable Australian Female Entrepreneurs

Melanie Perkins | Canva

Imagine becoming the youngest Australian billionaire at just 32 years of age with a net worth of $1.3 billion; Melaine has achieved this by her Graphic designing company ‘Canva’. Canva makes videos and graphic designing experience easier for its users.

Katie Page | Harvey Norman

Harvey Norman is a large multi-national retailer with revenues exceeding $2 billion. The company sells various consumer goods. Katie has been CEO for 20 years and manages a vast network of 277 stores in 8 countries. Katie’s efforts have been paramount to the success of her company.

She is now a role model for many young Australian female entrepreneurs.

Kayla Itsines | Sweat App

Kayla’s transition from a personal gym trainer to then a millionaire by developing a fitness app is indeed inspiring. Her app offers many workout plans and has a colossal 1 million active users per month. Her net worth is approximately $64 million.

Diana Williams | Fernwood Women’s Health Clubs

This stay-at-home-mom with her resilience has been able to open 70 fitness studios across Australia. The studios have more than 70,000 members with annual revenue of $8.32 million.

Janine Allis | Boost Juice

She is the founder of Australian beloved Boost Juice that has 580 stores across 13 countries. Her story is so heartening for all the young Australian female entrepreneurs. She started her career by making juices at home and eventually made her way to almost every nook of the country.

Catriona Wallace | Flamingo AI

This woman is certainly very impressive as she against all odds chose Artificial Intelligence (AI) as her career and subsequently excelled in it. She is among a few female executives in this field. Her business became a second women-led business to list on the Australian Stock Exchange and secured huge accounts like HSBC.

Maxine Horne | Vita Group

When settled in Australia, this British lady did not know she’d eventually become CEO of a telecom company. Vita Group that started with a single store has a video network at 123 locations now. Her company generates $600 million annual revenue (which reached a massive $773.1 million in 2020).

Lesley Gillespie | Bakers Delight

Her story is so heartwarming — it all started with a small home bakery that created the most scrumptious cakes. Her business has expanded to more than 600 stores with annual revenue of $600 million. Now Leslie is giving it back to the community and later won a Medal of Order for Australia for her endeavors.

Naomi Milgrom | Sussan Group

For Naomi, it all started with a small lingerie store that was owned by her grandmother in 1939. Now she is the CEO of Sussan Group of which fashion retailers Sportgirls, Sussan, and Suzanne Grae are conglomerates. This group has whopping annual revenue of $899 million. Naomi is also an avid philanthropist.

Charlotte Vidor | Toga Group

This Polish woman founded Toga, a small hotel in Sydney during the 60s. Now Toga group has a chain of hotels and apartment buildings. Under her leadership, the group serves the housing, property management, hospitality, and retail sectors in many countries.

COVID-19 and women in Australia

COVID-19 has brought many changes to the world. Work from home became a new norm; e-commerce thrived during the pandemic. As more Australian women were involved in service sectors, many lost their jobs more than men did. Now the country needs more dynamic women with business ideas to create opportunities for other women.

Future for Australian female entrepreneurs

Seeing the examples of these phenomenal ladies, one can conclude that Australian female entrepreneurs have come a very long way. There is still a lot that needs to be done for women to boost their economic participation.

Increasing women’s economic participation can add more than $20 billion to the Australian economy. The Australian government has been working on various programs to prepare women to accomplish more. There is a strong urge to eliminate gender inequality and discrimination.

The Australian government has formulated various strategies to lower the gender participation gap by 2025 (fingers crossed!). Similarly, the government has also undertaken to support women in their businesses. The government has been developing various incentives and programs to create a positive environment for women-owned businesses.