A hostess displays the Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, March 1, 2015. (Photo : Reuters)
A 44-year-old woman from a rural village in central China's Hunan Province has been named the richest woman in the country this past week.
The wealth of Zhou Qunfei, who founded Lens Technology Co. Ltd. in 2003, has soared to over 40 billion yuan (more than $7 billion) since her company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange last month.
Shares of Lens Technology were initially offered for 22.99 yuan ($3.71) per share. However, after gaining heavily for several days, the price of the company's shares rose to 70.98 yuan ($11.44) each.
According to Forbes, Zhou and her husband Zheng own up to 95.9 percent of the shares of Lens Technology.
Zhou founded Lens Technology after working in a glass manufacturing factory in Shenzhen for many years. Her company is renowned for producing scratch-resistant touch screen glass. The company supplies some of the world's foremost smartphone manufacturers (including Samsung and Apple), and its glass is estimated to be in use in up to 21 percent of the world's smartphones.
In a recent interview Zhou revealed that she was forced to leave home to work as a teenager after her mother died and her father lost his sight in an industrial accident. She claims to have been set on quitting her first job as a factory hand in a glass manufacturing company when she was promoted by the company to head a department.
"Maybe it was because my resignation letter was well written and this attracted the attention of the factory supervisor," she explained. "They kept me on and gave me a promotion to head my own newly created department."
Zhou is just one of many billionaires to emerge from China in the past decade. Experts say that the country's economic boom has created hundreds of billionaires and also expanded the middle class.
