Starting with just four people at SembEnviro in 2000, when she took over as head, Ms Loh now has 1,600 staff members in Singapore and Australia.
DECKED out in an elegant Chanel suit, SembEnviro president Loh Wai Kiew exudes an air of glamour.
But ask the boss of the nation's biggest waste collection company where she bought her suit and the odds are she will say 'a second-hand shop in Lucky Plaza'.
Half of her designer suits come from second-hand shops or factory outlets overseas. She said: 'I feel it is quite sinful to pay a huge amount of money for clothes. I also wear what I preach - recycling.'
Even before you hear more, you know this is a person who defies stereotypes. She prefers taking the road less travelled and is quite comfortable with it.
Judging by her accent and appearance, one would think she grew up rich.
Not so - while her great-great grandfather was philanthropist Kapitan Yap Kwan Seng, one of the founders of modern Kuala Lumpur, her family was not rich.
She said: 'There was not a penny left, we had to start from scratch.'
Ms Loh, 42, spent her childhood growing up in a small Malaysian village. When she turned 12, she decided the only way she was going to get ahead in life was through an education abroad.
She told her parents this and, along with a friend, looked up a list of schools. She found a girls' Catholic school in Yorkshire, England, that was 'cheap and good'.
She said: 'My father had a lot of people laughing at him; he had sent a girl to study overseas. They said, 'What is the point? She is going to get married anyway'.'
But she had decided to put her brains to good use.
When she finished school, she landed a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology.
That was also the time her parents moved to Australia. Knowing that they were having a hard time starting afresh there, she did not ask for money, but worked part-time.
She said: 'I was frying hamburgers three days a week, waking up at five in the morning.'
After her shift, she would go for classes.
When she graduated three years later, she faced a setback - the 1981 recession. Though she flew back to Australia, she could not find a job there.
She worked as a waitress for nine months until she saved enough money to fly to Singapore for a job interview. 'I wrote a gazillion letters for a job there, but Singapore gave me my first job.'
As one of the first female engineers at Singapore Aerospace, the male workers there simply did not know what to make of a female colleague.
They even laid bets on whether she would show up for work in pants or a skirt.
She wore culottes that day, so nobody won.
She said: 'I bunked out on the floor of some relatives. For six months, I was living on a roll-up bed.'
After that, she found two other girls to share a Housing Board flat.
'I started with nothing. I came to Singapore hoping really hard that I would get a job and I had only $300 to take me through the first month.'
In 1983, she took part in the Miss Singapore pageant to lend moral support to a friend.
She emerged the runner-up. Her friend never made it to the finals.
Singapore Aerospace seconded her to the Economic Development Board, where she spent nine years.
In 1994, she accepted a scholarship with SembCorp Industries, then known as Sembawang Corporation, and went on to do a management science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She became head of SembEnviro in June 2000, where she has been trying to transform the waste collection industry into a higher-end business. It started with a staff of just four people but now, has 1,600 staff here and in Australia.
Her individuality was put on display again last month when she came up with a calendar showing 12 gorgeous girls posing with animals. This Asian version of the Pirelli calendar has almost become a collector's item here.
She is single, lives in a Bukit Timah condominium and spends her free time with her dogs - a pair of dalmatians.
What's next for her?
She said: 'I wouldn't mind running even an airline if I get the chance. Who knows, there may be bigger things to come - I leave it to fate.'
By Sharmilpal Kaur