D enise Coates is a British self-made billionaire businesswoman and the founder and joint CEO of the online gambling giant, Bet365. With a degree in econometrics, she began her career working in her father's chain of betting shops. Recognizing the immense potential of online betting, she convinced her family to mortgage the shops to fund the development of an online platform.

She launched Bet365 from a portable office in a parking lot in 2001. The company grew at a phenomenal rate, becoming one of the largest and most profitable online gambling companies in the world, with a massive global customer base. Coates is known for being intensely private and media-shy, but also for being one of the highest-paid chief executives in the world, regularly taking home a salary and dividends worth hundreds of millions of pounds. She remains the majority shareholder of the private company she built into a global powerhouse.