Jennifer Hyman

Current Company

Rent the Runway — Co-Founder & CEO

Rethinking the Closet

Jennifer Hyman co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009 with Jennifer Fleiss while both were MBA students at Harvard Business School. The insight came from watching her sister buy an expensive dress she would wear once and never again. Hyman proposed that access to fashion — not ownership — could become a new category of consumer behavior. Rent the Runway would let women rent designer clothing and accessories for a fraction of the retail price, return them after wearing, and repeat.

The idea challenged deeply held assumptions about how people relate to their clothes. Jennifer Hyman raised venture capital from marquee investors, built a logistics infrastructure that included the largest dry-cleaning facility in the United States, and grew Rent the Runway to millions of members. She took the company public in 2021, making it one of few female-founded companies to reach the public markets in the fashion-tech space.

Building Through the Hard Part

Rent the Runway's public market journey has been turbulent. The stock declined sharply from its IPO price as the company navigated supply chain challenges, shifting consumer habits, and the capital-intensive reality of operating a physical-goods rental business at scale. Jennifer Hyman has responded by streamlining operations, focusing on the subscription model, and driving toward profitability — the less glamorous but essential work of building a durable business.

As Co-Founder and CEO, Jennifer Hyman remains one of the most prominent female founders in consumer technology. Her advocacy for policies like clothing sustainability, the circular economy, and gender parity in venture capital funding has made her a voice that extends well beyond her company. The Rent the Runway story is still being written, but Jennifer Hyman's contribution to retail innovation — proving that rental can compete with ownership as a consumer model — is already established.