The Deborah Meaden biography
Queen in the Dragons Den

The Deborah Meaden biography begins when she was born on February 11, 1959 in Somerset. She moved in with her mother at a young age after her parents filed for divorce. Her mother eventually remarried a gentleman named Brian, and Deborah spent several years in the home of her stepfather.

Meaden studied at Godolphin School in Salisbury, after which she became a boarder in Trowbridge High School. Around the time, her mother and stepfather founded an amusement park that eventually went on to become Weststar, the famed arcade company.

According to Deborah Meaden, she was only sixteen when she left school after completing her O-levels. Thereafter, she enrolled in Brighton Technical College, a business college where she completed her graduation and simultaneously worked as a salesroom model in a fashion house.

Soon after, she shifted to Italy and established her very first venture, a glass and ceramics export company. Her business did well, and Meaden sold products to top-notch companies like Harvey Nichols. However, after a year and a half, her business failed because the products were seen in other top-tier stores, and Deborah had little financial strength to fight for her sole agency rights.

Deborah Meaden then partnered with a friend, and together they bought a Stefanel textile franchise, which was the first retail and fashion franchise in UK at the time. This venture, Deborah said, taught her a lot about retailing and franchising. But after two years, Deborah sold her share to her partner for £10,000. She then joined her family's amusement park firm Weststar in 1988.

Meaden took the business to a whole new level, and her family venture thrived under her management. She worked her way from the floors to the office of Managing Director with her hard work, determination and vision. In 1999, when her parents announced their retirement, she acquired the major shareholdings of the company in a management buyout worth £ 10 million, with funds borrowed from Lloyds.

Concentrating fully on the growth of Weststar now, Deborah sold two parks and renamed the company The Generations Group Limited or TGGL. It was during this time that the firm, founded by her parents, became a conglomerate in the UK. With the thriving performance of the business under Deborah Meaden's leadership, the Generation Group soon became a favourite of investors.

Meaden sold the major shareholdings of the company to Phoenix Equity Partners for £33 million in 2005, while still retaining her 23% stake in the company. Then she sold her entire lot in 2007 to Parkdean Holidays.

She acquired Fox Brothers, a textile mill that had been around for more than 300 years, in 2009. The indefatigable businesswoman is most famous for appearing in the popular BBC programme Dragon's Den, whose cast she joined in 2006. She still appears on the Dragons Den show to date, and offers budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to present their business ideas to her for potential investment.

Whether or not you like her style, the Deborah Meaden biography is inspiring and certainly far from over. We will see much more of her in future and she will serve as inspiration to many budding male and female entrepreneurs.

More resources

• The Deborah Meaden biography from her official website.
• Dragons Den BBC profile.
• Interview with the Daily Mail newspaper.