Margaret Heffernan

Margaret Heffernan (; born 1942) is an Irish businesswoman. Having left school at 14 to join what became one of Ireland's largest retailers, Dunnes Stores, she became one of its two main shareholders in the early 1990s, and later its CEO.

Early life

Margaret Dunne was born in Cork in 1942, the eldest of the six children of Nora Maloney and Ben Dunne, who founded Dunnes Stores.

Career Heffernan left school at 14, in 1956, to begin working for her father at his Dunnes clothing shop on St Patrick's Street in Cork, which he had founded after leaving the chief buyer position at Roches Stores. She became a director of the company in 1964, as well as disagreements on strategy, with Heffernan favouring moving "upmarket" with good margins and Ben Dunne preferring to cut margins and increase volume. Having assumed control of the company's personnel function, she was fined in 1993 for the closure of a shop without the required redundancy notice to staff. By April 1993, Ben Dunne's responsibilities for menswear, footwear and own-brand manufacturing had all been removed, and Margaret Heffernan and Frank Dunne were supervising all operations other than food. By 1995, she was the primary lead for the Dunnes Stores group of companies.

Ben Dunne Jnr was again embroiled in scandal in the mid-1990s when it emerged he had given large amounts of money to a number of Irish politicians, mainly from the Fianna Fáil party including the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. Heffernan had discovered several six-figure payments her brother had made to Haughey, and went to Haughey's home to discuss these. She subsequently swore affidavits about the transactions, despite Haughey urging her not to do so, and this contributed to the setting up of the McCracken Tribunal and the Moriarty Tribunal.

In 2004, she gave the eldest of her sons, Michael Heffernan, a €30m stake in Dunnes Stores, and by 2008, was believed to have given away 6.4% of Dunnes Stores shares, probably between her four children.

The Irish Times has described Heffernan as "Ireland's most formidable businesswoman".

Personal life Heffernan was married to Andrew Heffernan, a consultant endocrinologist, who died in February 2026. They had four children together, three boys and a girl - at least three of whom later became involved in the family business - and at least six grandchildren.

Heffernan is a teetotaler, and stated to be religious.

At one point Heffernan opened a personal Yves Saint Laurent boutique, later closing that business.

Heffernan was in 2007 awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the National University of Ireland in recognition of her business and charitable work;