[citation needed] Huizenga was born at Little Company of Mary Hospital, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, on December 29, 1937, the first child in a family of garbage haulers.

[2] For approximately five years after graduation, he took on low-wage jobs and in September 1959 enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and spent six months on active duty.

[2] In 1962, he started the Southern Sanitation Service by borrowing US$5,000 from his father and convincing a rival trash hauler to sell him used trucks.

[6] Beginning with one garbage truck in 1968, and pursuing customers in an aggressive manner,[15] he created Waste Management, Inc., an entity that eventually became a Fortune 500 company.

[5] Huizenga repeated the process with Blockbuster Video, acquiring a handful of stores in 1987,[17] with the company becoming the leading movie-rental chain in the U.S. by 1994.

After a process of building and acquiring auto dealerships, in 1996, he formed AutoNation, which became the nation's largest automotive dealer.

Huizenga remained the managing general partner of the franchise until January 2009, when he sold another 45% of the team and as much of the stadium to Ross.

[26][27] In the early 1990s, Huizenga served a two-year probationary period with the National Football League as an owner, with the stipulation that he not buy another team.

[29] In the 1997 season, the team made the playoffs for the first time then went on to win the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians in seven games.

[29] In the next off season, Huizenga, claiming a financial loss of about $34 million running the team that year,[30] a claim subsequently disputed by Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist in an essay,[31] ordered the $54 million players-payroll to be cut, which led to the exodus of most of the championship players.

In 2017, the Marlins was sold by entrepreneur owner Jeffrey Loria to a group of investors for a reported sum of $1.2 billion.

[33] While his sale of the Marlins was characterized as "one of the worst moves in the franchise's history"[30] and Huizenga subsequently expressed regret over his final years with the club and wished he had instead chosen to "go one more year",[34] the analysts of the Baseball Prospectus, through statistical work, claimed by both winning the sport's ultimate trophy and selling the club immediately after that win for a substantial profit, Wayne Huizenga proved to be a "genius.

"[29] When he sold the Marlins, Huizenga, who still owned then-Pro Player Stadium, retained the rights to skybox tickets and club seat customers, as well as 62.5% of parking revenue, and 30% of concessions.

[42] In 2012, the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, renamed Southeast 9th Street in the Rio Vista neighborhood Wayne Huizenga Blvd.

[2] Huizenga married his second wife, Martha Jean "Marti" (née Pike) Goldsby, a native of San Antonio, Florida,[44] in April 1972.

He was a board member of the Laureus Foundation, a charity which, according to its mission statement, "us[es] the power of sport to end violence, discrimination and disadvantage.

In 1996, he based the Floridian Golf & Yacht Club there, an exclusive golf club "with enough estate homes on the property to cover his costs,"[52] whose course was designed by Gary Player,[53] where he extended free privileges to some two hundred "friends, relatives, and business associates," including actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones and retired GE Chairman Jack Welch.