Allan Zeman was born in Regensburg, Germany; and was raised in Montreal, Canada, where his mother worked in a hospital. When Zeman was seven years old, his father died. He started working at the age of ten. He dropped out of college, and by the age of nineteen, while working for a lingerie company, he had earned his first C$1 million.[citation needed] He made his first fortune by importing clothes from Hong Kong. He frequently travelled to Hong Kong for work in the 1970s, and eventually moved there in 1975. Zeman is married and has two grown children. He speaks English, French and some Cantonese, and is a teetotaler. In 1975, Zeman founded Colby International Group to source clothing in China and export it to Canada. In late 2000, by now a much larger and diversified company, Colby was sold to Li & Fung Ltd., a major competitor. In the early 1980s, Zeman felt that Hong Kong had no western restaurant that suited his needs, so in 1983 he opened California Restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong, a narrow street in Central, Hong Kong. He bought the entire block in 1984 and thus launched his career as both an entertainment operator and property developer. Through Lan Kwai Fong Holdings Ltd, of which he is chairman, he drove the development of Lan Kwai Fong to be one of the most important bar and night life districts in Hong Kong. He is said to own 65 percent of the district's properties. Meanwhile, as chairman of Lan Kwai Fong Concepts Holdings Ltd., he controls a number of restaurants in Lan Kwai Fong including California, California Coffee, China Lan Kwai Fong, Indochine, Tokio Joe, Cafe des Artistes, Tutta Luna, Jazz Club, Thai Lemongrass, BACI, BACI Pizza and Luna Di Notte. In July 2003, Zeman was invited by the then-Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, to become the chairman of Ocean Park. He managed to raise visitor numbers despite the opening of rival Hong Kong Disneyland, making the park more attractive and, remarkably, the park generated record profits. A 2007 article in Forbes magazine, referred to Zeman as "Hong Kong's Mouse Killer" because of the success that Ocean Park enjoys.