Richard Devos Net Worth 2024

What Was Richard DeVos’ Net Worth?

Richard DeVos was an American businessman and writer who had a net worth of $6 billion at the time of his death in 2018. Richard DeVos co-founded the multi-level advertising and marketing firm Amway with Jay Van Andel in 1959, and he owned the NBA staff the Orlando Magic. In 2000, Amway was restructured as Alticor, and in 2019, Amway and its sister firms accrued $8.9 billion in gross sales, making it the world’s largest multi-level advertising and marketing firm by way of income. In 2017, DeVos was ranked #107 on “Forbes” journal’s checklist of the 400 richest individuals in America, and in 2018, the publication ranked him #351 on its “World’s Billionaires List.” Richard wrote a number of books, together with “Believe!” (1975), “Compassionate Capitalism” (1993), “Hope from My Heart: 10 Lessons for Life” (2000), and “Simply Rich: Life and Lessons from the Cofounder of Amway: A Memoir” (2014). DeVos died on September 6, 2018, on the age of 92.

Early Life

Richard DeVos was born Richard Marvin DeVos on March 4, 1926, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was the son of Dutch Americans Simon Cornelius DeVos and Ethel Ruth Dekker, who had been employed within the electrical enterprise. Richard attended Grand Rapids Christian School, then he enrolled at Calvin College, the place he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. During World War II, DeVos served within the United States Army Air Corps.

Amway

When his army service was over, Richard returned house, the place he launched a number of companies along with his highschool good friend Jay Van Andel. They began a hamburger stand, a crusing enterprise, and an air constitution service, and in 1949, they signed as much as be distributors of a dietary complement firm referred to as Nutrilite. In 1959, DeVos and Van Andel based their very own multi-level-marketing agency, Amway (American Way Association). Their first product was an natural home cleaner. They purchased the rights to the product and distributed it by their gross sales channels. Over the subsequent 50 years, Amway expanded to unfathomable heights, and in 2022, “Forbes” ranked it #53 on its checklist of “America’s Largest Private Companies,” with a income of $8.9 billion. Richard served as the corporate’s president till 1993. DeVos purchased the Orlando Magic NBA franchise for $85 million in 1991 after unsuccessfully making an attempt to safe an MLB enlargement franchise for the town. He had beforehand owned the International Hockey League franchises the Grand Rapids Griffins, Orlando Solar Bears, and Kansas City Blades. The Orlando Magic play at Amway Center, which opened in 2010.

Richard served on the board of trustees for Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center and Michigan’s Northwood University, and he was the president of the conservative group the Council for National Policy. He additionally was a member of the Christian Leaders Institute legacy board. DeVos printed a number of books, and in his 2000 e book “Hope from My Heart: 10 Lessons for Life,” he mirrored on his expertise of present process  a coronary heart transplant within the U.Okay. in 1997 after being turned down within the U.S. resulting from his age and the truth that he had diabetes. In 2014, he printed “Simply Rich: Life and Lessons from the Cofounder of Amway: A Memoir,” through which he wrote about “work, religion, family, and the core values he is held on to, from his humble, Christian upbringing by his huge success as cofounder of one of many world’s largest companies: Amway.”

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Political Involvement

DeVos was a donor to the Republican Party and conservative causes reminiscent of Focus on the Family and the American Enterprise Institute, and he donated cash to the campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. He was a finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, and in 1987, he was appointed to the President’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic by President Ronald Reagan. At the time, Richard earned criticism for saying that individuals with AIDS needed “particular remedy,” and in a 2009 interview with “The Grand Rapids Press,” when DeVos was requested why he donated $100,000 to an effort to forestall homosexual marriage from being acknowledged in Florida, he responded:

“Because I imagine in it. That’s only a sacred difficulty of respecting marriage. It was not an anti-gay factor. I’ve been hung in effigy by the homosexual neighborhood for a very long time, from after I was on President Reagan’s first AIDS fee.”

Richard was a detailed good friend of Gerald Ford, and he was an honorary pallbearer at Ford’s state funeral and was concerned with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation as an honorary trustee.

In 1970, DeVos and his spouse co-founded the conservative non-profit group the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. They had been identified for philanthropy and donated to the humanities in addition to academic, historic, and healthcare causes. The couple additionally established the Richard and Helen DeVos Fieldhouse (Hope College in Holland, Michigan), the Richard M. and Helen DeVos Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan), and the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Arts and Worship (Grand Rapids Christian Schools).

Personal Life

Richard married Helen Van Wesep in 1953, and so they remained married till Helen’s loss of life in October 2017. The couple welcomed 4 kids collectively, Dan, Richard Jr. (higher referred to as “Dick”), Cheri, and Doug. Dan owns the hockey staff the Grand Rapids Griffins, and Dick is the husband of Betsy DeVos, who served because the U.S. Secretary of Education in the course of the Trump administration.

Richard was a religious Christian, and he joined the Christian Reformed Church in North America, a “numerous family of wholesome congregations, assemblies, and ministries.” During the final decade of his life, DeVos unsuccessfully tried to rejoin the Christian Reformed Church in North America with the Reformed Church in America resulting from a break up that befell in 1857.

Death

On September 6, 2018, Richard handed away at his house in Ada, Michigan, on the age of 92. DeVos was surrounded by his family on the time of his loss of life, and the trigger was issues from an an infection.

Awards and Achievements

DeVos was honored with the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking, American Marketing Association Edison Award, Salvation Army William Booth Award, The Philanthropy Roundtable William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership, Napoleon Hill Gold Medal Award for Free Enterprise Achievement, Charles H. Hoeflich Lifetime Achievement Award, Direct Selling Education Foundation Circle of Honor Award, Michigan Republican House and Senate American Spirit Award, “Orlando Magazine” Best Corporate Citizen Award, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Corporate Citizenship Award. Richard was inducted into the Junior Achievement National Business Hall of Fame and the Direct Selling Association Hall of Fame, and he acquired greater than a dozen honorary doctorate levels.