Zhou Qunfei

Zhou, just 45, is China’s richest female entrepreneur and one of its most successful; the company she founded, Lens Technology, is the primary supplier of touchscreen glass covers for Apple and Samsung. She grew up raising pigs and ducks on a tiny family farm in Central China, dropped out of school to work in a watch lens factory in Shenzhen, and, at age 22, set up her own gig with $3,000 in hand. Today, Lens is a $2.3 billion-in-revenue business with a market capitalization of almost $7 billion. She took the company public in March this year, in China’s largest tech IPO in the first quarter of 2015, and the stock price has almost tripled since then. Zhou, who manages a workforce of over 60,000, is now working on creating a higher-end glass. —Rupali Arora