Henry John Heinz was born in 1844 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents had emigrated separately from Germany, and met and married in Pittsburgh.
In 1869 Heinz founded a company along with his friend Clarence Noble, to market horseradish sauce made to a recipe that Heinz learnt from his mother. They named it Heinz Noble & Co.
This company went bankrupt in 1875. The following year Heinz founded another company, F. & J. Heinz, along with his brother John and their cousin Frederick Heinz. One of this company's first products was Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
In 1888, Heinz bought out his two partners and reorganised the company as the H. J. Heinz Company. In 1886, while riding an elevated train in New York City, he saw an advertisement for a shoe store boasting "21 styles"); this inspired Heinz's famous "57 Varieties" slogan. Heinz picked the number more or less at random because he liked the sound of it, selecting "7" specifically because of the "psychological influence of that figure" (as he put it) and "its enduring significance to people of all ages."
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