Martha Stewart Net Worth 2024: Turning Domesticity into Dollars

Martha Stewart is an American powerhouse, often hailed as the Queen of Domestic Arts.

Notably, she became the first self-made female billionaire in the US, having accumulated substantial wealth through her diverse business empire.

Since then she has lost a considerable portion of her riches but she is still tremendously wealthy.

In 2024, Martha Stewart’s net worth is approximately $400 million.

Stewart’s ventures, made up of an empire encompassing magazines, TV appearances, endorsements, home products, and the highly successful venture, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, experienced a rapid surge at one point, propelling her net worth to reach the billion-dollar mark.

But, at one point, her ventures took a hard hit, plummeting their market cap and with it, Martha Stewart’s net worth.

In this post, we’ll talk about the life of the lifestyle guru, the fluctuation in her net worth, as well as her biggest investments.

Martha Stewart’s Net Worth: Full Breakdown

When Stewart’s empire was at its peak, the American entrepreneur was worth over one billion dollars.

However, this changed after the drop in the stock value of her company, as well as after Martha’s incarceration.

Here is what we know about her assets and their contribution to her net worth.

6 Fun Facts about Martha Stewart

1. First self-made female billionaire in the US.
2. Started as a model and babysitter for famous athletes.
3. Created a catering business from her home kitchen.
4. Published over 99 books.
5. Served five months in prison for insider trading.
6. Hosts shows with Snoop Dogg and launched a CBD line.

Latest News and Updates

Presidential Endorsement: Martha Stewart recently made headlines by endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. presidential race. In an interview, Stewart emphasized her support for Harris because she wants a president who “doesn’t hate New York” and values democracy. This endorsement marks a shift from her previous support for Donald Trump in 2016, although she refrained from endorsing any candidate in 2020 due to the diverse political leanings of her followers.

New Documentary: A documentary titled Martha, directed by R.J. Cutler, is set to premiere on Netflix on October 30, 2024. The film will explore Stewart’s life, including her rise to fame, her career as a lifestyle mogul, and her well-publicized insider trading scandal. The trailer suggests that Stewart will be candid about her experiences, including her time in prison and the public’s fascination with her life.

Business and Wellness Ventures: Martha Stewart continues to expand her brand in new directions. One of her more recent ventures includes a successful line of CBD products. Her collaboration with Snoop Dogg on cooking and entertainment projects also remains a fan favorite, further bolstering her media presence and business ventures.

Martha Stewart’s Early Life

Martha Helen Kostyra (now Stewart) was born on August 3, 1941, in Jersey City, New Jersey. She’s the second child in the family and has five siblings.

The Stewart family lived in Jersey City for only three years after Martha’s birth.

They moved to Nutley when she was three years old, where Marta completed her high school education at Nutley High School.

Martha’s story is a “rags-to-riches” tale. She came from a family that wasn’t exactly poor but couldn’t afford to cover the education of all six children. Here is what she said when asked about that time:

I was the second of six kids. I wouldn’t say we were poor; we had no money. That’s different… My parents were able to pay our expenses, but not for education. We were encouraged to work hard in school and get scholarships.

As a child, Stewart learned a lot about cooking, gardening, and sewing from her mother and father. Her grandparents who lived in Buffalo, New York taught her about preserving and canning, among other things.

When she was only 10 years of age, Martha started making some money babysitting.

She babysat for the children of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Gil McDougald. At 13, she started modeling and appeared in a few television commercials, including ones for Lifebuoy soap, Tareyton cigarettes, and even Chanel.

When asked if she was aware she was beautiful at the time, she said:

No, I actually didn’t. I knew I was good enough to get $60 an hour, which was the going rate at the time. I wasn’t the cover girl. I wasn’t Suzy Parker. But I should’ve been. Maybe if I had had somebody encouraging me. But then I got married when I was 19.

In 1963, she earned her degree in Chemical Engineering from Barnard College. It was during her college years that she crossed paths with Andrew Stewart, a law student.

They tied the knot in 1961 and settled in Westport, Connecticut, where they refurbished an old farmhouse as their residence.

Martha commuted from New Haven to college until she obtained her degree. She started working on the stock market in 1967.

Even though she earned a good sum as a stockbroker, Martha decided to pursue her love for cooking and established a catering business called Martha Stewart Living.

She was also the manager of a gourmet food store. This is where it all started – the beginnings of her domestic arts story.

Martha Stewart Net Worth: How Martha Got and Lost Her Billionaire Status

When Stewart started her catering business, her husband already worked in publishing. He was the CEO of several publishing houses before he opened his own.

This connection would turn out to be very important in the career of Martha Stewart.

While Andrew worked as the president of Harry N. Abrams, Inc., a New York City publisher, he contracted his wife’s catering company for a book release party. This is where Martha met the head of Crown Publishing Group, Alan Mirken.

Impressed by Martha’s culinary and hosting talents, Mirken and Martha collaborated on their first Stewart publication, the cookbook “Entertaining”.

Martha Stewart didn’t start alone in her catering business. She partnered with Norma Collier, but this partnership didn’t last. Eventually, Stewart bought off Collier’s stake in the business.

The catering business was run out of Martha’s home kitchen.

The First Cookbook

Martha’s first cookbook“Entertaining” was published in 1982 and ghostwritten by Elizabeth Hawes. It was published through Clarkson Potter Books and found tremendous success very fast.

The book sold over 625,000 copies.

Books, TV Appearances, and Magazine Columns

The success of Stewart’s first book led to nearly a hundred other books, including:

• Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook in 1983
• Martha Stewart’s Hors D’oeuvres in 1984
• Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts in 1985
• Weddings in 1987
• Martha Stewart’s Secrets for Entertaining in 1988
• Martha Stewart’s Christmas in 1989
• Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection in 2019
• Martha Stewart’s Organizing in 2020

The relationship of Martha Stewart and Clarkson Potter continued for over 30 years and together, they have published 99 books. The most recent book is Martha Stewart’s Fruit Desserts, published in 2021.

In addition to cookbooks, Stewart often published her columns in magazines and newspapers. Television appearances also followed, including the ones on Larry King Live and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Slowly but surely, she was becoming a household name and at about this time, she earned her title “The Queen of Domestic Arts”.

Her home life wasn’t blossoming, though.

In 1987, Andrew and Martha separated and in 1990, they divorced. Martha kept her last name since it was already a component of her successful brand.

Martha Stewart Living

In 1990, Martha started publishing her own magazine through Time Publishing Ventures, called Martha Stewart Living. The premiere magazine was an almost instant success.

When she became a popular household name and her quarterly magazine became a soaring success, this led her to create her own show with the same name. The Martha Stewart Living show aired for over a decade and turned her into a huge lifestyle guru in the US and worldwide.
Since she didn’t originally own the rights to the magazine, Stewart paid $85 million to acquire it in 1997.

The show started as a half-hour show aired once a week in 1993 and by 1997, it had expanded to a weekday slot. In 1999, the show’s duration expanded to an hour.

The Martha Stewart Living broadcast ended in 2004.

The Success of the Company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Due to the growth of the show, the now-successful businesswoman decided to launch the company “Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia” in 1999, a venture that combined publishing, merchandising, and broadcasting services.

This company became a platform for the magazine, the TV show, as well as Martha Steward Living Radio.

Stewart’s empire flourished from this point forward. Under the Omnimedia business, she introduced many product lines including:

• Martha Stewart’s Everyday products
• Martha Stewart’s Crafts
• Martha Stewart’s Weddings
• Martha Stewart’s Kids

Thanks to the popularity of the show, the radio program, and books, Martha was already a brand. She had an exclusive line of houseware for Kmart including cooking tools, dishware, and bedding.

When her exclusivity deal with Kmart ended, other stores started carrying the brand, including J.C. Penney, Home Depot, and Macy’s.

Stewart even opened her own café in New York City and though it is closed now, you can still get her signature coffees in selected stores.

In addition to these ventures, Stewart launched a meal kit delivery service called Marley Spoon, created a furniture collection in partnership with Wayfair, and has a profitable wine brand.

According to Martha, most of her business’ profits came from branding.

Here is what she shared during a Parade interview:

We’re about 50-50 [products and publishing]. Our [profit] margins are much higher in merchandising. We like designing and making products. We’re good at it. We want to have our own stores. That’s how the J.C. Penney thing came around; it was an opportunity to have 700 stores within J.C. Penney. What I want to do now is build freestanding stores.

Living Omnimedia turned Stewart into the first self-made billionaire in the US. Two years after she formed Omnipmedia, she listed it on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing people to buy a piece from her media powerhouse.

On the same day the business empire went public, the stock opened at $18 per share. The spike in the stock made her 70% stake worth over a billion at that time.

In 2015, all Stewart branded products, her magazine, and the entire Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia brand were sold to Sequential Brands Group for $353 million.

The sale contract also included an impressive salary for Martha Stewart of $6.6 million plus over $660,000 in travel expenses and other perks.

Sequential Brands Group later sold the brand for $215 million.

Marta Stewart’s Incarceration

In 2001, Steward was accused of selling her ImClone Systems shares a day before the FDA announced that it denied to review the company’s flagship drug, causing the value of the stock to plummet.

She avoided an enormous loss of over $40,000 but the repercussions would turn out to be much worse.

She allegedly did this at the advice of Peter Bacanovic, her broker. She was quickly indicted on insider trading charges.

Two years later, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicted Martha Stewart, prompting her to resign from her role on the Board of Directors of the NY Stock Exchange.

She was found guilty and soon resigned as CEO of her Martha Stewart Living brand. The conviction included five months in prison, a five-year bar from serving as director of any public company, and a five-year limitation of her services as an employee of a public company.

She was convicted of conspiracy, insider trading, and making false statements to investigators and had to pay $195,000+ to settle the civil charges with the SEC.

Following her conviction, Stewart served five months in prison and two years of probation.

This scandal tarnished her reputation and her fortune, as well as leaving her unemployed for a while, but Stewart began slowly rebuilding her image upon her release.

Stewart’s Comeback after Her Incarceration

Stewart didn’t let her prison record define her future, so she launched quite the comeback since her release in 2005.

She returned to TV with The Martha Stewart Show between 2005 and 2010, and was even nominated for several Emmys.

Other TV projects include her TV appearances on Law & Order: SVU, Chopped, as well as her shows Martha Knows Best and Martha Stewart Cooking School.

In 2016, Stewart launched a joint cooking show with Snoop Dogg called Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, later renamed Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge.

She’s also published some new books, including The Martha Rules, for which she signed a $2 million deal.

What’s more, she also aired in her own show called The Apprentice: Martha Stewart which, as you’d expect, was a spinoff of The Apprentice.

Finally, Stewart started her own line of CBD products, Canopy Growth. The line includes oil drops, gummies, soft gels, and topical treatments.

She said in an interview with the New York Times:

I pop 20 of them and just feel OK, but some of my friends do two and feel high, I don’t know why. It’s not high like a marijuana high. It’s a CBD high, like, relaxed.

Awards and Achievements

Martha has been nominated for quite a lot of accolades over the years, and won some prestigious rewards, too.

Her most notable achievements include:

• Nominee for Outstanding Host for a Reality Program for her program with Snoop Dogg in 2017 at the Primetime Emmy Awards
• Nominee for Outstanding Daytime Program Host for Martha Gardens in 2023 at the Daytime Emmy Awards
• Winner for Outstanding Culinary Host for “Martha” in 2010 and 2011 at the Daytime Emmy Awards
• Winner for Outstanding Service Show for “Martha Stewart Living” with her team in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005
• Winner for Outstanding Service Show Host for “Martha Stewart Living” in 1995 and 1997
• Winner of the Muse Award in 2011 for New York Women in Film & Television

What Else Does Martha Stewart Invest In?

In addition to her shows, product lines, and TV appearances, Martha Stewart currently has a multimillion-dollar portfolio in real estate.

Her most famous property is the Turkey Hill farmhouse in Connecticut which she renovated and decorated with her now ex-husband in 1971. The couple bought the property for $46,750 in 1971 but sold it in 2007 for $6.7 million.

Turkey Hill was a dream place for my family and me for many years. It taught us, it nurtured us, it fed us, and it occupied us in so many wonderful and instructive ways. I would not be who I am today without the vast knowledge I gained there, on that small bit of paradise.

she says on her website.

In 1997, Martha bought the Skylands estate in Seal Harbor, Maine, for $5.4 million. She also bought the property next to Skylands to expand her retreat. This property is valued at $3.75 million.

She sold her West Village, New York, apartment on Perry Street for $6.65 million in 2004, and gifted her six-bedroom apartment on Charles Street to her daughter Alexis.

At one point, Stewart lived at her home on the Lily Pond Lane in the Hamptons, a house that she later sold for a whopping $16.5 million.

Today, the famous TV personality lives in Katonah, New York. Her estate is worth over $15.2 million and is spread across 150+ acres. There are seven houses on the property.

What Can We Learn From Martha Stewart’s Success?

Martha Stewart’s story is a trove of valuable lessons.

She is living proof of relentless passion and dedication and shows us that you can excel at something you are good at as long as you are courageous enough to pursue it.

Through her various businesses, she demonstrates that success isn’t only a product of talent, but also of hard work and unwavering belief in your abilities.

Martha’s story also tells the importance of adaptability in hard times.

She’s managed to rebuild her image after her conviction and incarceration, showing us that setbacks aren’t always synonymous with failure.

Even so, her criminal record and time spent in prison serve as a lesson in “what not to do”.