25 years ago Penny Streeter's business and marriage had failed and she was homeless and penniless.

She had launched a recruitment company just three years before but that had shut and she was forced to find refuge in homeless accommodation with her three young children.

But now she is an OBE and is such a successful entrepreneur she has purchased Mannings Heath Golf Club and and Wine Estate in Horsham and has launched the UK’s first ‘golf and wine’ estate in the UK.

Penny told The Argus: "I was a single parent, living in homeless accommodation. I knew I needed to do something or I'd end up as another statistic."

Penny was born in Zimbabwe in 1967 and arrived in the UK aged 12 with her mother Marion. She started work in the recruitment sector after leaving school at the age of 15 and set up her first business aged 22 but it failed.

Having had a business that went bust owing £20,000 of debts she was unable to secure a bank loan or any outside investment.

She worked at other people's recruitment businesses and raised extra cash working as a children's entertainer at weekends and she tried again with a new venture on her own and has not looked back.

Ambition 24hours was launched in 1996 as a temporary staffing agency for those in need of a 24-hour staffing service in the nursing sector.

She was determined to make it a success.

"It's a terrible thing to go through a business failure," she said.

"There's a big stigma attached to it. I learnt a lot. I took a really prudent approach and didn't draw a salary for the first four years."

With three young children to support, she said she could not have done it without the help of her mum and initially had to take all the calls herself, sometimes at three o'clock in the morning.

"I was on autopilot and just determined not to fail again."

The company expanded the service to cover locum doctors, carers, social workers and teachers and lecturers, establishing a national network of UK branch offices.

Now aged 49, she is the millionaire CEO of the A24 Group, set up in the UK in 1996 and South Africa in 2004. It is the largest healthcare staffing provider in Southern Africa.

Her new property is a new showcase for wine producer Benguela Cove - which she also owns, offering tastings and food pairings at the 100-year-old clubhouse.

Penny has converted one of the club’s two 18-hole courses to nine holes to use the available space to cultivate a vineyard of 45 acres for some 150 tonnes of grapes for sparkling wine, producing Chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot Meunier grapes for sparkling wine.

Her Benguela Cove Collection is a leading producer and wine destination at the start of South Africa’s Hermanus wine route in Walker Bay.