Entrepreneurs Who Changed History

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LEONARDO DEL VECCHIO

1935–

Self-reliant and determined, Italian businessman Leonardo Del Vecchio escaped his childhood poverty to found Luxottica, the largest producer and distributor of glasses and lenses in the world.

Dispatched to an orphanage by his widowed and impoverished mother at the age of seven, Leonardo Del Vecchio soon learned to rely on his own resources. At 14, he began work as an apprentice toolmaker in Milan, using his wages to attend design school at night. Discovering he had an aptitude for making parts for glasses, he moved to Agordo—the center of the Italian eyewear industry—and ...