Diane Foreman

Diane Foreman CNZM is one of New Zealand's most prominent self-made businesswomen and the head of the Emerald Group, a private investment company with interests spanning property, hospitality, recruitment and manufacturing. She built it into one of the country's most durable business empires without a co-founder, a listed vehicle or a technology story to sell.

What makes her stand out is where she started. She was adopted into a working-class Auckland family, left school at fifteen to train as a shorthand typist, and was a divorced mother of two by her early twenties, long before the boardrooms, the honours and the Rich List.

Who is Diane Foreman?

Diane Foreman was born around 1960 and grew up in Auckland after being adopted as a baby. She worked as a secretary, a medical practice manager and a real estate agent before business ownership, and has been open about doing it the hard way rather than inheriting a head start. In 1988 she married Auckland businessman Bill Foreman, who owned the packaging manufacturer Trigon, and it was that company that gave her a first platform in business.

How did Diane Foreman make her money?

Her breakthrough came through Trigon. After Bill Foreman suffered a stroke, Diane joined the board and took charge of the company, and in 1996 she managed its sale to the American packaging giant Sealed Air Corporation for around NZ$130 million. She reinvested through the Emerald Group, and her best-known success came in ice cream: in 2004 she bought the loss-making New Zealand Natural franchise, folded it into Emerald Foods and turned it around, growing it to hundreds of stores across more than twenty countries and adding the Mövenpick licence, before selling Emerald Foods to a Hong Kong buyer in 2015.

Alongside the food business, the Emerald Group has held commercial and industrial property in Auckland and the Waikato, the boutique Emerald Inn hotel on Auckland's North Shore, and a half-share in the executive recruitment firm Emergent, among other ventures.

What is Diane Foreman's net worth?

Foreman's wealth has been estimated at roughly NZ$180 million, though as with most privately held fortunes the figure is an estimate rather than a disclosed, audited number. Her holdings sit inside the Emerald Group and associated private companies rather than in listed shares, so any precise personal net-worth figure attached to her name online should be read as an approximation.

Is Diane Foreman married?

Foreman has been married three times. Her business career began during her marriage to Bill Foreman, from whom she later separated; since 2020 she has been married to the broadcaster Paul Henry. She has spoken publicly about her personal life in her own writing rather than leaving it to speculation.

Foreman's recognition has been sustained and international. She was named EY New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009, appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2012 for services to business, listed by Forbes among the most influential women in Asia in 2014, and inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 2024. She published In the Arena, a book on entrepreneurship, in 2015, and has become a prominent mentor and advocate for women building businesses.

Diane features in our look at the New Zealand women who redefined success on their own terms.

Sources: Wikipedia · NZ Business Hall of Fame · NZ Herald

Diane Foreman features in our guide to the most famous New Zealand entrepreneurs.