Barbara Corcoran

Early life and education Corcoran was born in Edgewater, New Jersey, in a working class Irish-Catholic family. Her mother, Florence, was a homemaker. Her father, Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., bounced from job to job throughout Corcoran's childhood. At times, her family relied on deliveries of free food from a friendly local grocer. Corcoran remembers her father as a man who occasionally drank too much and treated her mother with disrespect and condescension, particularly when he'd been drinking.

Corcoran struggled throughout her schooling, and was labeled the "dumb kid" by her teachers and classmates. She later learned that she had dyslexia, and has stated that the bullying "drove her to work harder and learn the skills she needed to succeed". She attended a local Catholic elementary school and started high school at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood. After flunking several courses during her freshman year, Corcoran transferred to Leonia High School, where she graduated as a D student.

Corcoran graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas College with a degree in education in 1971, faring better than she had in her previous schooling.

Career After graduating from college, she taught school for a year but soon moved on. She had worked a total of 20 jobs by the time she was 23, including a side job renting apartments in New York City. While she was a waitress, her boyfriend convinced her to work for a real estate company. She wanted to be her own boss, and in 1973, while working as a receptionist for the Giffuni Brothers' real estate company in New York City, she co-founded The Corcoran-Simonè with her boyfriend, who lent her $1,000.

In the mid-1970s, she also began publishing The Corcoran Report, a newsletter covering real estate data trends in New York City.

In September 2017, Corcoran was announced as a contestant for season 25 of Dancing with the Stars, where she was partnered with Keo Motsepe.

In 2017, Corcoran's Shark Tank deal with The Comfy, an oversized wearable blanket, turned her $50,000 investment into $468 million. She was then bought out.

Formerly known as Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners, today Forefront Venture Partners invests in high-growth, revenue-generating, early-stage companies.

Personal life Corcoran lives in Manhattan with her husband, Bill Higgins, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former FBI agent who participated in the Gulf War. The couple married in 1988. Corcoran gave birth to their son in 1994, via in vitro fertilization, with an egg donated by her sister Florence.

In 2001, she purchased a 2,700-square-foot apartment in a co-op building on Park Avenue for $3.5 million. In 2017, she purchased a double wide trailer home in California for $800,000.

In 2019, for her 70th birthday, she held a mock funeral.

Her hobbies include skiing and going to the beach.

She lost her home, the $800,000 double wide, in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, in January 2025.

Selected bibliography (co-authored with Bruce Littlefield)

(co-authored with Bruce Littlefield)