SOHO China is one of the country's most successful real estate developers, and Zhang Xin is at the head of it all.

Zhang lived in poverty as a teenager, working low-paid factory jobs in toy manufacturing and electronics in Hong Kong. It took her five years to save enough money for a plane ticket to London and an English language course. Once in England, she studied at Cambridge University and went on to work at Goldman Sachs in New York City.

"Everybody comes from nowhere, that's the thing about China," she told CNN last year.