Mary and Douglas Perkins are a British couple who have a net worth of $2.1 billion. Mary Perkins and her husband Douglas made their way to riches with their brick-and-mortar eyeglass business, Specsavers. Their story starts back in the 1960s when Mary trained as an optometrist at Cardiff University.
There she met Doug Perkins, her future spouse and business partner. By the late 1960s, the pair set up their first business in Bristol. Off to a good start, the company turned into a chain of opticians, which they sold for £2 million in 1980. After the sale, they moved to Guernsey, where they established Specsavers in 1984. It has since turned into the world’s largest private optician chain, selling more than 12 million eyeglasses and 290 million contact lenses annually. Specsavers got a boost from the deregulation of opticians by the Thatcher Administration, during which Mary also became a British peer. According to reports, Mary often makes secret inspections of Specsavers stores by visiting them disguised from time to time.
| Net Worth: | $2.1 Billion |