Philanthropist and ECE advocate Wayne Wright Sr.
High-profile philanthropist and early childhood education champion Wayne Wright snr (ONZM) has died.
Wright and his late wife Chloe Wright in 1996 co-established Best Start Educare in Tauranga, which grew to become New Zealand’s largest early childhood education provider.
It has about 260 centres nationally and more than 4500 staff caring for about 20,000 preschool children.
Wright invested more than $60 million in the early childhood education sector.
Remembered as a brilliant entrepreneur, Wright moved from his first business as a lawnmowing contractor to a kiwifruit orchard business, then to a retaining wall construction company with offices across the US and Mexico and on to a telecommunications company in Alabama.
The retaining-wall business came about by chance and led to the couple relocating to Texas, where Chloe Wright earned two degrees.
Wright had previously spoken to the Herald about his greatest successes. He said he was building a crib wall in his early 20s in Lower Hutt when an American stopped and told him: “This will go well in America.”
“So I went over to America and I built a plant, made the blocks, built the walls, trained people, commuted backwards and forwards ... ” Wright said.
It had turned into “quite a big operation” across the US, and after getting a big contract in Texas, he suggested to his wife that they move there.
She agreed and studied at the University of Texas. The couple bought a house and lived there for seven years while expanding the company.
“When she graduated, we decided to come home,” Wright said.
They bought their first childcare centre after being approached for help by a friend whose wife owned a Tauranga facility.
Best Start was converted into a charity in 2015, when owners the Wright Family Trust sold the business to the Wright Family Foundation.
Wright described Best Start as “probably the most satisfying” of all his projects.
The Wright Family Foundation has distributed more than $50m of charitable funds to support education, the arts and social programmes.
Chloe Wright – who died in September 2023 – was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to philanthropy, education and health in 2020. Wayne Wright snr was honoured in 2025, having previously turned the offer down.
He told the Herald last year that he’d believed accepting it would preclude him from earning a knighthood.
“I thought that once you accepted it at one level, that was the end of the story,” Wright said.
During an interview with the Herald in June 2025, the entrepreneur described how he and his “very talented” late wife had met at the Griffins biscuit factory in Lower Hutt when he was 19 and working in its accounting office.
“I was wandering through the factory one day and I was watching these women packing these biscuits ... ”
The couple were married for 57 years and had five children.
“We’re a pretty tight family – we look after each other and she was the driver, of course, because she made everything happen and I just made money,” Wright said at the time.
He took each family “subtribe” on holiday every two years “anywhere in the world”.
A statement from his family said Wright was a dedicated family man.
“Most would consider his life as full, yet he still had ambitious goals he was eager to complete.”
The family said: “Wayne and Chloe’s children will continue their amazing philanthropic legacy.”
Wright – who received the Ernst and Young Master Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015 – had told the Herald that he planned to retire after finishing projects in Warkworth and Paeroa, as well as a few others by the end of the decade.
Funeral services will be held in Tauranga on Saturday, March 28.