Forrest Mars Jr. was an American billionaire business scion who died in 2016 with a net worth of $23.4 billion. From 1975 to 1999, Forrest Mars Jr. was co-president of the worldwide Mars firm, alongside his younger brother John Mars. During his lifetime, Forrest was one of the top 25 richest persons in America, as well as the richest person in Virginia.
He was a member of the well-known Mars family, and the grandson of Frank C. Mars, who founded the namesake confectionery and food firm in Tacoma, Washington, in 1911. Mars’ private property was the 82,000-acre Diamond Cross Ranch, which was located on coal and natural gas-rich regions near Montana’s Tongue River.
How did Forrest Mars Jr. die?
Forrest Mars Jr., the millionaire co-owner of Mars Inc. who oversaw the company’s global expansion of M&M’s, Milky Way bars, and Uncle Ben’s rice, has died. He was 84.
According to Mars spokesman Jonathan Mudd, he died on July 26 in Seattle. A heart attack was the cause. Mars lived in Big Horn, Wyoming.
For over 30 years, the grandson of Forrest E. Mars, who created the first Mars products in 1911, assisted his younger brother and sister in running the closely held company.
According to the company’s website, he took the McLean, Virginia-based food maker’s products into Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic in 1991, and opened its first manufacturing factory in China two years later.
“Mars believed that the first company in after the fall of the Soviet Union would win the hearts, minds and taste buds of those former Soviet bloc consumers,” Lawrence L. Allen wrote in “Chocolate Fortunes” published in 2010. “Its penchant for aggressive international expansion would play an important role in the company’s success in China.”
Meanwhile, Forrest, the eldest son of Forrest Mars Sr. and Audrey Ruth, was born on August 16, 1931, in Oak Park, Illinois. He was the grandson of Frank C. Mars, the founder of the Mars corporation, which is best known for producing chocolate and culinary goods. Forrest Sr. built the company into a tremendously profitable commercial empire by introducing popular chocolate sweets throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Mars has a younger brother named John and a younger sister named Jacqueline, who worked for the family business until 2001. Mars attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, and graduated in 1949. He went on to Yale University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1953. Mars went on to receive his MBA from New York University five years later. He also served as a finance officer in the United States Army.
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