Richard Branson

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, born on 18 July 1950 in Blackheath, London, is an English business magnate best known for co-founding the Virgin Group in 1970. He came of age in a Britain where music, retail and air travel were changing quickly, and he built a public identity around enterprise, risk and a taste for adventure. By 2016, he controlled five companies, and by June 2023 Forbes listed his estimated net worth at US$3 billion.

Branson was the son of Edward James Branson, a barrister, and Evette Huntley Branson, a ballet dancer and air hostess. He had two younger sisters, Lindy and Vanessa. His family background included public service, through his paternal grandfather Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, a judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor, and a longer family connection with India beginning in 1793. Branson later said that one of his great-great-great-grandmothers was an Indian named Ariya.

School did not suit him easily. He was educated at Scaitcliffe School, briefly attended Cliff View House School, and then went to Stowe School until the age of sixteen. Branson has dyslexia, had poor academic performance, and has spoken openly about having ADHD. On his last day at school, his headmaster Robert Drayson told him he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. His parents supported his efforts from an early age, and his mother was herself an entrepreneur, with ventures that included building and selling wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins.

Branson showed his appetite for business young. After failed attempts to grow and sell Christmas trees and budgerigars, he launched Student magazine in 1966 with Nik Powell. The first issue appeared in January 1968, and the magazine later helped support the mail-order record business he began from the crypt of St John’s Church off Bayswater Road in London. He sold records for less than High Street outlets, opened a record shop in Oxford Street, and in 1972 used money from the store to launch Virgin Records with Powell. The name “Virgin” came from an early employee, because they were all new to business.

Virgin Records grew from a small label into the world’s largest independent record label. Branson bought a country estate north of Oxford and installed The Manor Studio, where he leased studio time to new artists. Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, released in 1973, was Virgin Records’ first release and became a chart-topping best-seller. The label signed acts including the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, XTC, Japan, UB40, Steve Winwood, Paula Abdul and Culture Club. In the 1980s the Virgin brand expanded rapidly as Branson started Virgin Atlantic and developed the music label; later he founded Virgin Rail Group in 1997 and Virgin Galactic in 2004.

Branson was knighted in March 2000 for “services to entrepreneurship,” and in 2007 Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. His words still suit the pattern of his life: “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” From a schoolboy with poor marks to a businessman in retail, music, transport and space tourism, Branson’s public story has kept circling back to experiment, recovery and action.