From Assistant to Entrepreneur: Moroccan-Born Founder Builds Dutch Group With 600 Employees
She had hired her assistant and secured the budget for his position. When he became her boss in a reorganisation, Rahma El Mouden decided to leave. Originally from Tangier, she went on to create a company in the Netherlands that grew into a group with several hundred employees.
“You can’t leave!” A client reacts this way when Rahma El Mouden tells him she is leaving the cleaning company where she works. He encourages her to go into business for herself. Other clients would put their trust in her in turn, she says in an interview published in July 2026 by LINDA.nl.
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Her story begins in Amsterdam in 1975. After arriving from Morocco at the age of sixteen, she spends some time with her child, then starts cleaning for a few hours a day. She sometimes takes her baby along in a stroller while she works.
Her organisational skills lead to her temporarily replacing a manager, before taking on several management roles. She then aims for another promotion. But management chooses her assistant, whom she had hired herself and for whom she had secured a budget. He is now her boss. Rahma leaves the company.
Seven employees at first, then a family business
In 1997, she founded MAS, the Multicultureel Amsterdams Schoonmaakbedrijf, with seven employees and 150,000 guilders. Its business gradually expanded from cleaning to maintenance, security and building management.
In a profile published by Rabobank in spring 2024, she described a group of four companies employing around 600 people. Its clients included the Rijksmuseum and production company EndemolShine.
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Her daughter Oumaima has taken over the day-to-day running of the group. Her granddaughter Noor, then a management student who worked two days a week in human resources, was considering taking over one day.
Rahma remains involved in educational projects. In her July 2026 interview, she says she is preparing a school to support young people who need help, in the Netherlands and Morocco.
