30 Richest Businesswomen in the World
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There are 2,095 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes. And 234 of them are women. While women only make up about 11 percent of the world's richest people, the richest women have an incredible amount of wealth.
The top 30 of the world's richest women are worth about $630 billion — more than the GDP of countries like Thailand, Poland and Sweden. These businesswomen are the richest of the rich.
This is who they are and how they made their fortunes.
30. Ronda Stryker
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Net worth: $6.5 billion
Age: 66
Country: United States
Note: All net worth numbers are from Forbes. Rankings change as the market moves.
Ronda Stryker has been a director of the medical equipment manufacturing company, Stryker Corporation, for over 30 years. She is the granddaughter of Homer Stryker, who founded the company in 1946.
Stryker holds a master's degree in special needs education and inherited a large shareholding position in the company when Homer died in 1980.
She and her husband run the Stryker Johnston Foundation, which helps fund nonprofits located in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
29. Magdalena Martullo-Blocher
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Net worth: $7.1 billion
Age: 52
Country: Switzerland
Magdalena Martullo-Blocher is CEO of EMS Chemie, a polymer and specialty chemical company located in Switzerland. Her father, Christoph Blocher, amassed his fortune as CEO and majority shareholder of EMS-Chemie. She took over running the company in 2004.
Prior to becoming CEO, she worked in executive positions at Johnson & Johnson and Rivella.
Martullo-Blocher is also a politician and was elected to the Swiss parliament in 2015.
28. Antonia Ax:son Johnson
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Net worth: $7.4 billion
Age: 77
Country: Sweden
Antonia Ax:son Johnson is the owner of Axel Johnson, a privately held trading company which has interests in real estate, grocery stores and energy. According to Forbes, she is also an equestrian and horse breeder, and owns horses that compete in the Olympics.
The colon in Ax:son comes from an old way of contracting words in the Swedish language. After the Ax:son surname became well known, the family chose to keep it that way.
27. Marie-Helene Habert
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Net worth: $7.4 billion
Age: 55
Country: France
Marie-Helene Habert was a director of Dassault Group, a Paris-based company which owns Dassault Aviation, a major military and business jet manufacturer. She stepped down from her position in 2019.
Habert and her three other siblings each control a quarter of the group, which was founded by her grandfather.
26. Sandra Ortega Mera
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Net worth: $7.5 billion
Age: 52
Country: Spain
Sandra Ortega Mera is the daughter of Amancio Ortega, a billionaire Spanish businessman who founded Inditex, which is best known for its Zara brand.
Mera's mother, Rosalia, died in 2013. Upon her death, Mera inherited a 7 percent stake in Inditex and 89 percent of Rosp Corunna, an investment management firm.
Mera is active in managing the Paideia Galiza Foundation, a nonprofit foundation for those with disabilities.
25. Diane Hendricks
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Net worth: $8 billion
Age: 74
Country: United States
Diane Hendricks is the cofounder of ABC Supply, one of the largest roofing supply companies in the United States. She and her late husband, Ken Hendricks, grew ABC Supply from one single store in Wisconsin to 780 locations throughout the country.
Ken died in 1982, and Diane has been running the company since then. According to Forbes, Hendricks has "spent millions on local economic development" in Beloit, Wisconsin, helping bring new businesses to the state.
ABC Supply has over $11 billion in sales annually.
24. The Mars Sisters
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Net worth: $7.8 billion, each
Age: See below
Country: United States
There are four sisters to the Mars family fortune. Each own an 8 percent stake in Mars Incorporated, which they inherited when their father, Forrest Mars Jr., died in 2016.
The sisters are Victoria Mars (aged 55), Pamela Mars-Wright (61), Valerie Mars (62) and Marijke Mars (56). They have all worked for Mars at some point, and many of them still do.
23. Ann Walton Kroenke
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Net worth: $9.1 billion
Age: 72
Country: United States
Ann Walton Kroenke is an heir to the Walmart fortune. She inherited her stock from Bud Walton, who was the brother of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
Once a registered nurse, Kroenke now runs the Audrey J Walton and Ann Walton Kroenke Charitable Foundation.
Her husband, Stan Kroenke, owns the Los Angeles Rams. It's unclear how much stake she has in Walmart.
22. Blair Parry-Okeden
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Net worth: $9.4 billion
Age: 71
Country: United States
Blair Parry-Okeden is an heiress to Cox Enterprises, a global conglomerate company that owns AutoTrader, Kelley Blue Book and Cox Communications. Her grandfather is James Cox, who started the business.
While Parry-Okeden owns a 25 percent stake in the Atlanta, Georgia-based company, she has no role.
She lives in near-anonymity in Scone, Australia.
21. Savitri Jindal and Family
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Net worth: $9.5 billion
Age: 70
Country: India
Savitri Jindal is the chairwoman of Jindal Group, an energy and steel holding company that owns and operates the third-largest steel producer in India.
Jindal's husband, steel magnate Om Prakash Jindal, died in a helicopter crash in 2005. His empire was split between their four sons.
20. Massimiliana Landini Aleotti and Family (Tied)
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Net worth: $9.1 billion
Age: 78
Country: Italy
Massimiliana Landini Aleotti and her three children own Menarini Group, a pharmaceutical giant that generated $4.5 billion in sales in 2020.
Menarini was owned by her husband, Alberto Aleotti, who died in 2014. He left the multibillion-dollar company to her and their three children.
20. Lam Wai Ying (Tied)
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Net worth: $9.1 billion
Age: N/A
Country: China
Lam Wai Ying co-owns Biel Crystal Manufactory, along with her husband, billionaire Yeung Kin-man.
Biel Crystal is a massive glass screen supplier for cell phones, tablets and watches, with some 100,000 employees in China.
The company counts Apple, Samsung, Tag Heuer and Gucci among its clients.
18. Wang Laichun
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Net worth: $10 billion
Age: 53
Country: China
Wang Laichun is the chairwoman and part owner of Luxshare Precision Industry, a computer hardware manufacturer that counts Apple, Google and Microsoft as its customers.
The company is known as "little Foxconn," and business has been booming.
17. Kirsten Rausing
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Net worth: $13.9 billion
Age: 68
Country: Sweden
Kirsten Rausing owns a third of the Swiss multinational food packaging company Tetra Laval, sharing ownership with her two brothers.
Tetra Laval owns Tetra Pak, the largest food packaging company in the world, which developed aseptic packaging — the technology that allows beverages like milk to be stored in cartons rather than glass.
Rausing lives in the United Kingdom and is one of the wealthiest people in the U.K.
16. Zhou Qunfei
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Net worth: $14.2 billion
Age: 51
Country: China
Zhou Qunfei is one of the world's richest self-made women. As a teenager, she worked as a migrant factory worker making watch lenses for about $1 a day, working 16-hour shifts.
When she decided to quit, she wrote a letter of resignation that impressed the factory chief, who promoted her. When Zhou was 22, in 1993, she started her own watch lens company with $3,000 in savings.
That company, Lens Technology, made $4.6 billion in sales in 2020.
15. Fan Hongwei and Family
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Net worth: $16.4 billion
Age: 54
Country: China
Fan Hongwei is the chairwoman of Hengli Petrochemical, a rubber and plastic chemical company.
Her husband, Chen Jianhua, is the chairman of Hengli Petrochemical's holding company, Hengli Group, the largest petrochemical company in China. He's worth $9.5 billion.
Not that much is publicly available about Fan.
14. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken
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Net worth: $17 billion
Age: 66
Country: Netherlands
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken holds a 23 percent stake in Heineken, one of the world's largest beer companies.
She's the executive director at the company and the heir to Freddy Heineken, who served at the company for over 30 years until his death in 2002.
Heineken has 73,000 employees and produces 250 beers and alcoholic beverages.
13. Wu Yajun
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Net worth: $18.6 billion
Age: 57
Country: China
Wu Yajun is the cofounder of Longfor Properties, a massive investment holding company that manages real estate and related services.
The company produces high-rise apartment buildings, office buildings and shopping malls throughout China.
Wa cofounded Longfor with her husband in 1993, but the two divorced in 2012, and he is no longer involved in the company.
12. Zhong Huijuan
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Net worth: $18.7 billion
Age: 60
Country: China
Zhong Huijuan started a pharmaceutical company "empty-handed," according to the Malaysian news site, The Star.
Zhong started that company, Hansoh Pharmaceutical, when she was a teacher. Hansoh Pharmaceuticals is now China's largest manufacturer of psychotropic drugs.
Her husband, Sun Piaoyang, is also a billionaire and chair of another large Chinese pharmaceutical company.
11. Laurene Powell Jobs
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Net worth: $19.2 billion
Age: 57
Country: United States
Laurene Powell Jobs is the widow of legendary Apple visionary Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.
Powell Jobs is more into philanthropy than building an empire of riches. As she told The New York Times, "I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings, and my children know that ... Steve wasn’t interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me."
Powell Jobs' fortune is in both Disney and Apple stock. She is the founder of Emerson Collective and the Climate Leadership Council.
10. Abigail Johnson
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Net worth: $20.9 billion
Age: 59
Country: United States
Abigail Johnson is the daughter of Fidelity founder Edward Johnson III. Fidelity, which is the second-largest mutual fund manager in America, has been a family-run business since its inception in 1946.
Johnson has been CEO and president of Fidelity since 2014. She has an estimated 24.5 percent stake of Fidelity, which has $3.8 trillion in managed assets.
9. Iris Fontbona and Family
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Net worth: $23.6 billion
Age: 78
Country: Chile
Iris Fontbona's husband, Andronico Luksic, became the richest person in Chile by making a fortune in the country's beverage, mining and financial sectors. When Luksic died in 2005, he left his inheritance to Fontbona and their three children.
Fontbona and her sons control a large Chilean mining company, one of the world's largest shipping companies, and they also have investments in many other sectors.
8. Gina Rinehart
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Net worth: $23.7 billion
Age: 67
Country: Australia
Gina Rinehart made her fortune by taking her father's struggling mining company, Hancock Prospecting, and turning it into Australia's leading mining business.
The company owns the lease to the world's largest iron deposit and also breeds commercial beef cattle.
Rinehart is Australia's richest woman. She prefers to keep out of the limelight.
7. Susanne Klatten
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Net worth: $28.1 billion
Age: 58
Country: Germany
Susanne Klatten is part of the Quandt family. Her grandfather, Herber Quandt, was an industrialist who saved BMW from bankruptcy and turned it into an enormously profitable car manufacturer.
Klatten owns about 19 percent of BMW and is the sole owner of Atlanta AG, a German chemical company with revenue exceeding $2.5 billion.
6. Yang Huiyan
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Net worth: $29.4 billion
Age: 39
Country: China
Yang Huiyan is the daughter of Yeung Kwok Keung, founder of the Country Garden Group, one of the largest real estate firms in China.
She owns 57 percent of the company, most of which came from her father, who transferred his holdings to her in 2007. She is the richest woman in Asia.
Huiyan holds dual citizenship in Cypress and China. She was educated in America and holds a degree from Ohio State University.
5. Jacqueline Mars
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Net worth: $31.3 billion
Age: 81
Country: United States
Jacqueline Mars owns one-third of Mars Inc., the largest candy company in the world — the company pushes about $18 billion worth of confectionaries each year. She is the granddaughter of Frank C. Mars, who founded Mars Inc.
Mars also has investments in other services like pet food and pet care. For example, the company owns the Los Angeles-based animal hospital chain, VCA Inc.
The company is currently in the process of removing all artificial coloring from its candy products.
4. Julia Koch
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Net worth: $46.6 billion
Age: 58
Country: United States
Julia Koch and her three children inherited David Koch's fortune after he died at the age of 79 in 2019. David left them a 42 percent stake in Koch Industries, which has an estimated revenue of $115 billion per year.
Julia first met David when she was 27. The two met during a blind date. David was 50, and the date went poorly, but the two met at a party a few months later and hit it off.
Julia now sits on the board of directors of Koch Industries and is the president of the David H. Koch Foundation.
3. Mackenzie Scott
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Net worth: $54.2 billion
Age: 50
Country: United States
Mackenzie Scott was married to Jeff Bezos for 25 years and divorced him in mid-2019. Twenty-five percent of Bezos's Amazon stake — 4 percent of the company — went to Scott, who immediately became one of the richest people in the world.
She also became one of the most prolific philanthropists in the world, giving away nearly $6 billion in 2020.
She married Dan Jewett, a science teacher from Seattle, Washington, in 2021.
2. Alice Walton
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Net worth: $61.7 billion
Age: 71
Country: United States
Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. But rather than make her work all about Walmart, she used $1.2 billion of her riches to establish the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum features works from artists such as Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Alfred Stieglitz.
Walton is now venturing into health care with the creation of the Whole Health Institute and Chopra Medical Library, a holistic health center, as well as a holistic health school.
1. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers
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Net worth: $73.8 billion
Age: 67
Country: France
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the only child of Liliane Bettencourt, a principal shareholder in L'Oreal. Liliane was one of the richest women in the world before her death in 2017.
Bettencourt Meyers and her family own 33 percent of L'Oreal stock, which has a market cap of $174 billion.
Bettencourt Meyers and her family donated $226 million to help repair Notre Dame cathedral after it was engulfed in flames in April 2019. She's the richest woman in the world, the 15th-richest person in the world, and is a rather private individual.
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