WHILE waiting to catch a plane at JFK airport, Sarah Doukas noticed a waif-like 14-year-old girl in the departure lounge. Doukas gave her a business card and told her to call if she wanted to become a model. The girl’s name was Kate Moss. She joined Doukas’s agency the next day and is now one of the world’s most successful models.

Doukas has always done things her own way. Sent away to boarding school at the age of seven, she quickly learnt to be independent and self-reliant. Her parents had wanted her to go into a profession, but Doukas flunked her exams and moved to London to become a model.

She said: “I was put under a lot of pressure from my parents to be academic. As far as my father was concerned, unless you followed medicine or law or a conservative profession, you weren’t going to have a reasonable life. But I thought, to hell with it, I’ll do whatever I want. I completed one A-level and walked out of the rest. My father was furious. He didn't speak to me for two years.”

In between modelling assignments, Doukas started selling antiques from a stall in Kings Road and embarked on a series of adventures. She went to live in Paris for a couple of years to sell antiques in flea markets and then returned to London to manage a punk band.

She said: “A friend in Paris wanted to sign the band to his record company and had nobody to look after them in Britain so I started managing them. I did everything from driving the van to loading the equipment to setting up their gigs. I didn’t get any sleep but it was a lot of fun.”

While managing the band, Doukas met and married an American singer and went to live with him in San Francisco, where she set up a children’s clothing company.

When they returned to Britain four years later in 1982 Doukas got a job as a trainee booking agent in a modelling agency. She said: “I had always thought it might be quite fun to do. I was delighted not to be modelling any more. I never enjoyed being in front of the camera. I was always panic-stricken.”

After seven years there, she realised she wanted to start her own agency even though it would mean becoming a rival to the company she worked for.

She said: “I knew my boss wouldn’t like it but I had this burning ambition to have my own company. I felt bad about it but I was getting frustrated because there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go within the company and I knew I couldn’t stay there forever with someone in a more senior position to me. My husband was furious that I was going to leave my job because I was being paid very well.”

However, she took no action to set up her agency until she had left her old job. “It was a mad thing to do,” she said, “but I couldn’t go to sleep at night or look at somebody at work and think I was organising something behind their back.”

Once she had left she asked some accountants to help her draw up a business plan and after much effort found a backer who would lend her some money. However, just before the deal was finalised, the brother of an old school friend called to say he had heard about her plans and would like to get involved. It was Sir Richard Branson.

It was not a situation most other entrepreneurs would find themselves in. Doukas said: “Thank you, father, for sending me to an expensive school. I shared a dorm with Richard’s sister while I was doing A-level retakes. It is all about who you know in this life.”

Despite having no money of her own to invest, Doukas was determined to retain at least 50% of her company and so Branson agreed that his private company would take the other half and in return give Doukas a £250,000 interest-free loan for three years as well as buy a house in Kensington for Doukas to use as offices.

Her modelling agency, Storm, quickly became known for taking on only the best models. She said: “We used to turn people down who were actually quite good because I wanted to create a very elitist agency and work only with the high-end magazines. I always think you have to strive for the top.”

Storm also became known for finding models in the most unlikely places — and for taking a chance on unconventional talent. Doukas discovered Liberty Ross while shopping on London’s Oxford Street, and signed up Sophie Dahl even though she was much larger than conventional models.

Business went so well that in 1997 Doukas opened a second agency in Cape Town, South Africa, and the following year also started up an actors’ agency in London.

Now 49, Doukas has turned Storm into something of a family affair — her brother Simon works for the company and her eldest daughter Noelle is a booking agent. The agency now has a turnover of £8m and employs 29 people.

She said: “There has been a lot of luck involved. I was lucky when I started this agency that there was no other agency starting at the same time and the economy was good. And then I was lucky that when we went into recession I had low overheads so we could spend money while other people were tightening their belts.”

Doukas said she has been driven by the desire to prove to her father that she could achieve success on her own terms. She said: “I am not interested in money. It is nice to have a nice car but it is not my prime motivation. Instead, I have a desire to prove myself. I think I am terrified of failure. Also, I love what I do. It is easy to come to work and do long hours if you enjoy it.”