Reginald Francis Lewis was born on Dec. 7, 1942, in Baltimore, Maryland. His entrepreneurial skills began at age 9 when he increased his newspaper delivery route from 10 neighbors to 100 customers and later sold it for a profit.

He graduated from Virginia State University in 1965 with a degree in political science. That summer he participated in a program at Harvard created by the Rockefeller Foundation that introduced African Americans to the study of law. He made such an impression that Harvard invited him to attend school that fall. He completed his Juris Doctor in 1968.

Lewis worked at a top New York City law firm for two years before branching out to start his own firm. Fifteen years later, he switched careers and created TLC Group, a private equity firm.

In 1987, Lewis sent Wall Street into a frenzy with the purchase of Beatrice International Foods for $985 million and renaming it TLC Beatrice International Holdings, a snack food, beverage and grocery store conglomerate that was the largest Black-owned and managed business in the United States. When TLC Beatrice reported revenue of $1.8 billion in 1987, it became the first Black-owned company to have more than $1 billion in annual sales. At its peak in 1996, TLC Beatrice had sales of $2.2 billion and was No. 512 on Fortune magazine's list of 1,000 largest companies.

In 2005, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture opened in Baltimore with the support of a $5 million grant from his foundation. It is the East Coast's largest African American museum, occupying an 82,000 square-foot facility.

Lewis was on his way to becoming the nation’s first Black billionaire when he died of brain cancer at the young age of 50 in 1993. He was the richest African American in U.S. history at the time of his death with a $500 million net worth.

He wrote several books, but his most famous is “Why should white guys have all the fun?”

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