The Inn at Little Washington

Martha Stewart was born on August 3, 1941, in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was raised in Nutley, where she discovered her passion for cooking, gardening and housekeeping. She won a partial scholarship to Barnard College in New York City, and earned her bachelor's degree in history and architectural history. While in school, Stewart worked as a model to pay her tuition. After graduation, she continued a successful modeling career, doing television commercials for Breck, Clairol, Lifebuoy soap and Tareyton cigarettes. In 1965, her daughter was born, and Stewart quit modeling,

In 1967 she began a successful second career as a stockbroker. When the stock market began to falter, Stewart and her family moved to Westport, Connecticut in 1972. She developed a catering business first in partnership with a friend from her college days, and then on her own. In ten years this business, which she ran out of the basement of her farmhouse, had become a $1 million enterprise. She also opened a retail store in Westport to sell specialty foods and supplies for entertaining.

Stewart wrote articles for the New York Times and was an editor and columnist for the magazine House Beautiful. In 1982 Martha Stewart published the first of many lavishly illustrated books. "Entertaining," co-written with Elizabeth Hawes, was an instantaneous success, and made Martha Stewart into a one-woman industry. Soon she was producing video tapes, dinner-music CDs, television specials and a baker's dozen more books, including books of quick recipes, books on hors d'oeuvres, pies, weddings, Christmas, gardening and restoring old houses.

Regular appearances on the Today show made her a household name. She signed an advertising and consulting contract with Kmart. For much of the 1980s, she was a contributing editor to Family Circle magazine before starting her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living. In 1993 Martha Stewart started a syndicated half-hour TV show called, like her magazine