The Tory Burch Foundation announced that Jocelyn Ho, founder of the Rare Plant Fairy in Detroit, is among 120 women founders selected to be a 2026 Tory Burch Foundation Fellow.
The foundation, created by fashion entrepreneur and philanthropist Tory Burch, supports women building businesses that last by providing access to community, expert resources, and strategic support. Burch’s goal is for her curated group of entrepreneurs to generate more than $1 billion in economic impact by 2030.
Rare Plant Fairy is an international enterprise with a team of 22 employees. It cultivates and ships some of the world’s most sought-after exotic plants from her 14,000-square-foot space inside a former truck factory on Detroit’s east side.
“Being a fellow means I’m part of a community of female founders where we lift each other up,” says Ho. “I’ll be in a room with women who have faced similar challenges, who’ve hit the same walls and felt the same doubts and kept going anyway, and that kind of company is rare.
“What I love most is that it runs both ways: I get as much out of helping others as I do from receiving the help I need myself. That’s the whole point of belonging; it only works when it keeps going.”
Before founding Rare Plant Fairy in early 2020, Ho worked in Hong Kong as a speech-language pathologist for preschoolers with special needs. She and her husband relocated to Detroit in 2019 with plans to continue her career, but the COVID-19 pandemic quickly derailed those ambitions.
With schools and hospitals freezing hires for non-essential staff, Ho pivoted, selling personally collected and propagated plants on Facebook Marketplace. Her first weekend brought in $1,000. That became the seed money she used to launch her business.
Fast-forward six years: Rare Plant Fairy has scaled into a commercial nursery featuring 14,000 square feet of vertical growing systems, an in-house plant tissue culture lab, 22 employees, and millions in gross sales.
