Bernard Marcus: Co-founder and First CEO of Home Depot
Business Owner · Retail & E-commerce
Bernard Marcus, a pharmacist's son from a Newark tenement who couldn't afford Harvard Medical School, co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and led it as CEO and chairman until 2002.
About Bernard Marcus: Co-founder and First CEO of Home Depot
Bernard Marcus (May 12, 1929 to November 4, 2024) was an American billionaire businessman who co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and served as its first CEO and first chairman until retiring in 2002. In November 2024 Forbes estimated his net worth at US$10.3 billion. He was a major donor to the Republican Party, including Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. Marcus was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, the cabinet maker Joe Marcus and Sara Marcus, the youngest of four children, and grew up in a tenement. He graduated in 1947 from South Side High School, wanted to become a doctor and was accepted to Harvard Medical School but could not afford the tuition, and instead earned a pharmacy degree from Rutgers University, where he belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi. He first worked in a drugstore as a pharmacist but moved to the retailing side of the business, working at a cosmetics company and in various other retail jobs, then for Odell Inc. in California from 1968 and Daylin in Los Angeles from 1970. He became CEO of Handy Dan Improvement Centers, a Los Angeles-based chain of home improvement stores, before co-founding Home Depot with Arthur Blank in April 1978. Sources: English Wikipedia (Bernard Marcus, accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Co-founder, first CEO and first chairman, Home Depot (1929-2024)
Company Details
The Home Depot
Home Improvement Retail
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