Perot was also seen as a kind of superman. He organized the rescue of his employees out of Iran (which got turned into a book and a movie). He was a fighter for veterans' rights and veterans' benefits (and the POW/MIA issue, whatever one thinks of it). He was a distinguished eagle scout and negotiated in 1990 to be Vietnam's Business Agent should relations ever be normalized. He was a self-made billionaire with lots of charisma.
Perot was, much like Trump, a case of a lot of unique converging factors. It wasn't just that he was rich, it was that he had all this other stuff going on that built up his image.