Martha Stewart has been called the “original influencer” thanks to her decades in the public eye and immense entrepreneurial success.
In the early 1980s, Stewart built a sprawling empire that would come to span home décor, her own magazine, television, and a line of cooking and entertaining books, becoming one of America’s most famous self-made women. A master of entertaining, Stewart’s brand embodied perfection and attention to detail, an image that came crashing down when she was sentenced to five months in jail after an alleged insider trading scandal.
Martha Stewart’s rise from caterer to billionaire media mogul is now featured in the Netflix documentary “Martha,” which explores her life, fame, and business prowess.
Here’s how Martha Stewart built, partially lost, and rebuilt her fortune over the years.
Before she started a media empire, Martha Stewart worked as a model and later as a stockbroker in New York City.
As a young model working to support her family, Stewart worked with clients ranging from Unilever to Chanel, and mentioned that she could sometimes earn up to $50 an hour through modeling, not an insignificant amount in the ’50s and ’60s.
In the 1970s, Stewart took on a job as a stockbroker on Wall Street. She was the only female stockbroker at her firm.
“It was not until I left Wall Street that I discovered my true entrepreneurial bent. I loved ideas. I loved building. I loved creating,” Stewart wrote in a post on her website, Vogue reported. “I loved making things that would enhance everyday living. And I loved making money as a result.”
In 1976, Stewart left her career as a stockbroker to start her own catering company from her kitchen. She went on to become one of the most famous celebrity chefs in the business, with thriving home decor and furniture lines, cookbooks, and a media empire.
Martha published her first book, “Entertaining,” in 1982. It quickly became a smashing success.
In 1977, Stewart and her catering business were hired to prepare food for a book-release event hosted by Stewart’s husband, a publishing executive.
At the event, Stewart was introduced to Alan Mirken, the head of Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Random House at the time. The two got to talking, and Mirken encouraged Stewart to write a cookbook that included the recipes she used for her catering events.
“Entertaining,” Stewart’s first book, was published in 1982 and sold more than 625,000 copies, Entrepreneur reported. She has since published almost 100 cookbooks.
In 1997, Stewart borrowed $85 million to finance the acquisition of her magazine.
The first issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine was published in 1990 in partnership with Time Publishing Ventures.
Subscriptions to the magazine grew to over 2 million, and in 1991, Martha Stewart and Time launched Martha Stewart Living as a quarterly magazine. Soon, Time was publishing an issue of Martha Stewart Living every month.
Stewart saw the value in owning all of her brands outright as part of the media conglomerate Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which she founded in 1996.
When Stewart’s media company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public in 1999, she became the first self-made female billionaire in the United States.
On the day her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, launched its initial public offering, stocks were priced at $18, but the stock tripled in value before closing. Stewart’s 70% stake in the company was now worth more than a billion dollars.
Martha Stewart not only became an instant billionaire but America’s first self-made female billionaire, Forbes reported.
“Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public in 1999,” she told People in 2020. “I was the first self-made female billionaire. I had opposition, and that kind of opposition to a woman-built business was really outrageous. Even my own lawyers were negative about the possibility of success. I remember one lawyer sending me an orchid, saying, ‘Oh, you did it. Wow. What a surprise.’ What a piece of garbage that guy is.”
Oprah Winfrey, another lifestyle icon, became a billionaire just a few years after Stewart, in 2003.
In 2015, Stewart sold Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which includes her branded products and magazine, to Sequential Brands Group for $353 million.
After the sale, Stewart continued to receive a salary reported to be upward of $6 million in 2017, The New York Post reported.
Her salary included $406,941 for “non-business” travel, $114,620 for “utilities and telecommunication services,” and $146,880 tied to “personal fitness, wellness, beauty, and wardrobe.”
In 2019, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was sold for $215 million to Marquee Brands, Forbes reported.
Martha Stewart lost her billionaire status in 2002 after the price of her company’s stock plummeted following a stock-trading scandal.
Following the scandal, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s valuation dropped over 70%, from an all-time high of $39.75 per share to $7.84 by the time Stewart was indicted in 2003, ABC News and the Herald-Tribune reported.
The charges stemmed from an incident in December 2001.
In 2004, Stewart was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, two counts of making false statements, and one count of obstruction of agency proceedings, and she spent five months in a minimum-security prison, followed by five months of home confinement, The New York Times reported.
After receiving information that was not publicly available, she sold off her ImClone Systems shares a day before their value plunged, avoiding a loss of more than $45,000, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said. Prosecutors said she later lied about receiving the tip-off, the “Martha” documentary explained.
Forbes reported that Stewart’s stock briefly went up after she was convicted of three felony charges in 2004, temporarily making Stewart a billionaire again. Stewart spent five months in prison and was also fined $30,000. After her release, however, her company’s stock dropped 40%, and by 2007, Forbes estimated her net worth to be around $550 million, almost half of her previous net worth.
In 2017, she called the experience of prison a “very, very awful thing.”
“It’s not a good experience and it doesn’t make you stronger. I was a strong person to start with and thank heavens I was. And I can still hold my head up high and know that I’m fine,” she told Katie Couric on the former “Today” anchor’s podcast.
Over the years, Stewart has made a fortune from her many business ventures.
Stewart has her hand in a variety of industries, from a CBD gummy brand to a wine partnership with 19 Crimes and various home accessory, improvement, and furniture lines with department stores like Sears, Kmart, Home Depot, and more.
In 2021, Forbes reported that Stewart’s brands generated roughly $900 million in combined retail sales annually, and her branded products are already in more than 70 million households.
Forbes also estimated that Stewart’s kitchen-goods brand, Martha Stewart Kitchen, would generate as much as $1 billion in revenue by 2025.
Stewart has also starred in popular television shows, from “The Martha Stewart Show” to “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.”
The New York Post reported that Stewart was paid $1 million for the first season of “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.”
Stewart opened her own restaurant, The Bedford, at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
The restaurant has been criticized for its high price tags. The roast chicken entrée cost $90 when the restaurant first opened, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 2022. The price of that entrée appears to have dropped, however, to $59.99.
Reviews have also been mixed, with one New York Times reporter writing, “The Bedford is decent enough that it will probably make money for the Paris and Marquee Brands, but it’s ho-hum enough that it just might dim Ms. Stewart’s reputation for dazzling competence in everything she touches.”
Martha Stewart has a real-estate portfolio worth millions of dollars.
Stewart’s primary residence is an extensive 156-acre farm in Bedford, New York, which she purchased for $15.2 million in 2000. The farm is featured heavily in the “Martha” documentary.
Bedford, a Westchester County town about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan, is considered one of the richest communities in America, The Wall Street Journal reported.
There are seven houses in total on the property, with Stewart residing in a three-story home that she calls the “Winter House.” In addition to Stewart’s residence, there is a circa-1770 Colonial home called the “Summer House,” a tenant cottage, a guest house, stables, tennis courts, and a swimming pool on the property.
Stewart is also known to summer at her 63-acre estate in Seal Harbor, Maine, which she calls her “favorite place,” Architectural Digest reported.
Completed in 1925, the home was originally built for Edsel Ford of the Ford automotive family. It remained in the Ford family’s ownership until Stewart purchased the property, which includes a grand 12-bedroom house, in 1997.
According to her website, Stewart also owns two homes in New York City: one on Perry Street in the West Village and another on Fifth Avenue.
Stewart and her then-husband bought their first house together for $80,750 in 1970. Decades later, it sold for $6.7 million.
Popularly known as Turkey Hill Farm, the three-bedroom house was built in 1805 and featured two greenhouses, a carriage house for guests, a “party barn” with a sleeping loft, expansive gardens, and a heated outdoor swimming pool.
When the home hit the market in 2006, it listed at nearly $9 million, The New York Times reported. In 2007, it sold to a private buyer for $6.7 million.
She sold her East Hamptons home on Lily Pond Lane for $16.5 million in 2021.
Mansion Global reported that Stewart paid $1.7 million for the 1-acre property in 1991, following her divorce from her husband Andrew Stewart.
Stewart described acquiring the property in “Martha,” saying she was looking for the shabbiest home on the nicest street. She renovated the home herself.
“It was the oldest house on the block and a total wreck,” Stewart said, according to her website. “I decided I had to have it.”
Stewart sold the house after deciding to spend most of her summers at her property in Maine, which she called Skylands.
Stewart raises peacocks, chickens, cows, geese, miniature donkeys, pigeons, and horses on her farm in Bedford.
Horses are known to be expensive to raise, and the price of peacocks ranges from $250 to $1,000 each.
Given that Stewart owned more than 20 peacocks on her farm before six were killed in July 2022, it can be assumed that Stewart paid a small fortune for all of her beloved animals.
Though she’s no longer a billionaire, Martha Stewart continues to live a very luxurious life.
Stewart has shared photos of pasta dinners topped with caviar and luxe vacations in tropical locales, showing that she knows how to live it large.
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