For the second year in a row, Alice Walton, the heir to Walmart, has topped Forbes’ list of the world’s richest women.
The most recent Forbes World’s Billionaires list says that Walton is the richest woman in the world with a fortune of $134 billion.
According to AFP, she became the world’s richest woman in September 2024, taking the title from L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt.
Julia Koch, widow of the late entrepreneur David Koch, came in second with $81.2 billion, followed by Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, an heiress to the French company L’Oréal ($100 billion).
This year, there are 3,428 billionaires on the list. Of these, 481 are women, or 14% of the total. Last year, there were 406 women, or 13.4% of the total.
Iris Fontbona, the Chilean mining and beverage heiress, came in fourth with $52.6 billion. She beat Jacqueline Mars, the heiress to candy and pet food, who came in fifth with $49.1 billion. It’s especially impressive that she moved up from outside the top 10.
Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, a Swiss shipping mogul with a net worth of $44.5 billion, is the only self-made billionaire in the top 10 richest women. She slid from fifth to sixth position.
Only 122 of the 481 female billionaires made their own money, which is a small increase from 113 last year. Diane Hendricks, an American roofing mogul, is the next richest self-made woman with a net worth of $22.3 billion.
This year, Beyoncé, the world’s biggest music singer, made her first appearance with a net worth of $1 billion.
Rihanna ($1 billion), Spanx inventor Sara Blakely ($1.4 billion), and Taylor Swift ($2 billion) are other famous women who made their own money. Luana Lopes Lara, a former ballerina from Brazil, is another new person. She co-founded the prediction market company Kalshi. At 29, she becomes the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, seizing the title from Lucy Guo, the 31-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, who has $1.4 billion.
Iris Fontbona and Zheng Shuliang ($33.2 billion), vice chair of a Chinese aluminium firm her late husband started, took the places of Melinda French Gates ($30.3 billion) and Marilyn Simons ($32.5 billion).
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