Donald Friese Net Worth

Donald Friese has an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires, Donald Friese profile (figures as of October 20, 2026). That is up from $1.2 billion in 2019.

Donald Friese is an American businessman who turned a warehouse job into a billion-dollar company. Born on October 3, 1940, in York, Pennsylvania, he was the third of 13 children and grew up poor and orphaned in rural Pennsylvania. He started working on a dairy farm at age 12. After high school he joined the U.S. Army in 1958 and trained as a missile mechanic.

After 3 years in the Army, Friese moved to Los Angeles with just $125 in his pocket. He found an entry-level job in the warehouse of C.R. Laurence, then a small supplier with one location, where he became the sixth employee. Over the following years he worked his way up and bought into the business piece by piece. Forbes counts him as self-made.

How Donald Friese built C.R. Laurence

Friese's fortune came from C.R. Laurence, a company that makes and distributes products for the glass industry. A few years after he joined, the owner, Bernie Harris, sold him a 10% stake, and Friese kept adding to it. When Harris retired in 1997, Friese bought the 50% he did not yet own, giving him the whole company. He then expanded by buying competitors and adding manufacturing.

By 2015, C.R. Laurence offered more than 65,000 products for glass work. That year Friese sold it to Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, a unit of the Irish company CRH and a major customer, for $1.3 billion in cash. He kept most of the real estate. In a widely noted gesture, he gave his employees $85 million, with all 1,600 longtime workers receiving bonus checks, some for more than $1 million.

How his Forbes estimate has changed

Forbes estimated Friese at $1.2 billion in 2019. His figure then held at $1.1 billion for four straight years, from 2020 through 2023. It returned to $1.2 billion in 2024 and stayed there in 2025. That steady record fits a fortune built largely on the cash sale of a company and the real estate he kept afterward.

His estimate then jumped. On its 2026 World's Billionaires List, Forbes put him at $1.8 billion, and its real-time billionaires tracker showed the same $1.8 billion as of October 20, 2026. Since retiring in 2018, Friese has focused on giving through his family foundation, to which he has donated at least $60 million. He and his wife Andrea live in Chatsworth, Los Angeles.