Carrie Marcus Neiman

Carrie Marcus was born in Louisville, Kentucky to German-Jewish immigrants Delia (Bloomfield) and Jacob Marcus. Jacob was a cotton broker, a fairly common occupation in the South. In 1895, the family moved to Hillsboro, Texas. Carrie did not receive a formal education but was educated at home in a European milieu, reading German newspapers and studying European fashion magazines. In 1899, she followed her older siblings to Dallas, where she worked as a saleswoman at A. Harris and Company, a local department store, and became a top salesgirl.

She met Abraham Lincoln "Al" Neiman in Dallas, and they married shortly after, on April 25, 1905. She joined her husband, her brother Herbert, and his wife Minnie in a sales promotion business—the Neiman-Marcus Sales Firm—based in Atlanta, Georgia. Their success brought them a choice: accept a buyout from a local merchant, or promote a new (and risky) product, Coca-Cola. The family sold their business for $25,000 and returned to Dallas in 1907 to start an entirely new type of business.