This Black Entrepreneur Just Topped Forbes Richest Self-Made Women List

Fawn Weaver, founder of the world’s fastest-growing Black-owned whiskey brand Uncle Nearest has been named one of Forbes richest self-made women in the country according to the publication’s annual ranked list. In less than ten years liquor climbed to a valuation of more than $1.1 billion per the outlet, and expects to pull in $100M+ in revenue this year.

Forbes reports that Weaver’s fiscal worth sits at around $480 million, earning her the No. 68 on Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women list.

The bootstrapped spirits behemoth was started in 2017 when Weaver and her husband Keith the sold all their West Coast real estate, including their dream home in Old Agoura, California, and two Mini Coopers, Forbes reported.

Despite the huge risk (that included tanked credit scores) the entrepreneur kept the faith.

“The right money will find you if you’re turning down the wrong money,” she told the outlet.

As previously reported by ESSENCE, Weaver started the company after learning the story of Nathan “Nearest” Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught a young Jack Daniel the craft of distilling.

“When I went to the family I asked, ‘what is the one thing you think should happen to honor Nearest?’ They responded, “we think his name should be on a bottle,’ ” Weaver previously told ESSENCE. “And by then we had already created a foundation with the intention of paying for all of his descendents to go to college. That was something I was working on before I ever came to this story, just looking at taking underprivileged kids and figuring out how to get them what they need in high school so they can get the grades to get into Ivy League. So when I began working on this, I just transferred that passion. Rather than randomly focusing on kids from across the country, I said, I’ll just focus on one family. And bringing it back to the legacy of excellence that their ancestors started. It continued for a couple of generations but I believe that somewhere along the line, they forgot. They were not living up to the same ideals from the work ethic and in terms that level of excellence as Nearest and his children and his grandchildren.”