Charlene de Carvalho was a stay-at-home mom with five kids and no business education when, at age 47, she inherited control of Heineken.
She decided to take on the challenge.
Here, for the first time, she opens up about her remarkable journey.
You might say that one life ended and another began the day that Charlene de Carvalho buried her father.
It was a gray day in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in January 2002 when the London housewife and mother of five bid goodbye to Freddy Heineken.
Charlene loathed fanfare as much as her father, a visionary businessman who had transformed a modest Dutch brewery into the world’s third-largest brewer.
So this was a simple ceremony in an ordinary cemetery, with no funeral preceding it, attended only by Freddy’s secretary and his immediate family: Freddy’s wife, Lucille; his son-in-law, Michel; and 47-year-old Charlene. Until her father’s passing, Charlene had no money to her name except a single share of Heineken stock—then worth 25.60 euros, or $32—th…
She decided to take on the challenge.
Here, for the first time, she opens up about her remarkable journey.
You might say that one life ended and another began the day that Charlene de Carvalho buried her father.
It was a gray day in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in January 2002 when the London housewife and mother of five bid goodbye to Freddy Heineken.
Charlene loathed fanfare as much as her father, a visionary businessman who had transformed a modest Dutch brewery into the world’s third-largest brewer.
So this was a simple ceremony in an ordinary cemetery, with no funeral preceding it, attended only by Freddy’s secretary and his immediate family: Freddy’s wife, Lucille; his son-in-law, Michel; and 47-year-old Charlene. Until her father’s passing, Charlene had no money to her name except a single share of Heineken stock—then worth 25.60 euros, or $32—th…