Quimby, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, sold 80% of the company to private equity firm AEA Investors for an estimated $175 million.

In recent years she has launched a couple of new ventures, including an organic cotton clothing company for children, happygreenbee.com, and Seaside Partners, a real estate development firm.

Her secret to success: “After immigrating to the U.S. from Siberia in 1950, my grandmother, Baba, made a living running a hot dog stand on Boston’s Revere Beach. I spent my childhood summers with Baba, and she let me believe I was ‘working’ as I helped her count the day’s proceeds and record the weather and sales in her daily journal.

[Because I was] surrounded by hot dogs, ice cream, candy, and bubble gum, my grandmother often had to admonish me in her thick Russian accent, ‘Don’t eat the profits, my devochka [little girl]!’”