How 25 of the world's wealthiest women got so rich

Revealed: the wealthiest woman in 25 nations

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Women control one-third of the world's private wealth but accounted for just 12.5% of the planet's 3,194 billionaires in 2022, according to the most recent data from Statista. Clearly, there's more work to do when it comes to tackling income equality at all levels of society.

Of those with a net worth of 10 figures or more, many are heiresses who have received their fortunes via parents or late partners, while others are entirely self-made, building fortunes via their businesses and brands.

Read on to meet the richest women in 25 countries around the world ranked them from least to most wealthy, based on real-time estimates from Forbes and other reputable sources.

All dollar amounts in US dollars and historic currency conversions correct for the time.

UAE – Huda Kattan: $400 million (£313m)

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The UAE's wealthiest woman is believed to be Iraqi-American beauty influencer Huda Kattan, who's based in Dubai and has $400 million (£313m) to her name. Entirely self-made, the makeup artist started blogging in 2010.

Quickly building an audience, she launched her eponymous beauty brand in 2013, which now turns over around $200 million (£156m) a year. Huda Beauty relies on word of mouth and viral organic content rather than paid-for advertising, with the brand boasting around 53 million followers on Instagram.

New Zealand – Rosemari Delegat and family: $614 million (£480m)

Courtesy Delegat

New Zealand's richest woman is believed to be Rosemari Delegat, who shares her fortune of just over a billion New Zealand dollars ($614m/£480m) with her brother Jim. The siblings have turned the Delegat winery business established by their Croatian-born parents back in 1947 into one of New Zealand's leading wine empires, having rescued it from receivership in the early 1980s.

The multimillion-dollar firm's brands, which include Oyster Bay and Barossa Valley Estate, are world-renowned and have picked up a slew of prestigious awards over the years.

Barbados – Rihanna: $1.4 billion (£1.1bn)

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Declared by Forbes to be the first billionaire to hail from the Caribbean island nation, Barbados's richest woman (and wealthiest person overall) needs no introduction. One of the world's most recognisable faces, Robyn "Rihanna" Fenty has enjoyed a chart-topping music career, although it's her cosmetics and lingerie businesses that have made her a billionaire.

The superstar saw her Fenty Beauty brand, which she co-owns with LVMH, double its revenue in 2022. Meanwhile, her Savage X Fenty underwear label, of which she owns 30%, has been valued at a cool $3 billion (£2.4bn). Rihanna will also launch her haircare line, Fenty Hair, later this month.

The philanthropic star is putting her money to good use via her Clara Lionel Foundation, which funds education and natural disaster recovery projects around the world.

Brazil – Ana Lucia de Mattos Barretto Villela: $1.7 billion (£1.3bn)

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According to Forbes, Vicky Safra is Brazil's richest woman, with a fortune of $19.4 billion (£15.2bn) that she shares with other family members. However, Safra is Greek by birth and lives predominantly in Switzerland, so her links to Brazil are arguably tenuous.

Ana Lucia de Mattos Barretto Villela (pictured), on the other hand, was born in Brazil and currently resides there. A member of one of the country's top banking dynasties, she holds a huge stake in Itausa, the holding company of Latin America's largest private bank Itau-Unibanco.

She inherited this in 1982 after her parents were killed in a plane crash.

Poland – Dominika Kulczyk: $2 billion (£1.6bn)

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Dominika Kulczyk is the daughter of Jan Kulczyk, who was officially Poland's richest person until his death in 2015. A controversial figure, he made the bulk of his money oligarch-style during the 1990s off the back of Poland's privatisation of state-owned companies, according to Forbes.

At the time of his death, more than half of his $4 billion (£3.2bn) fortune was tied up in brewer SABMiller. Dominika shared his estate with her brother but was awarded most of the proceeds from the sale of the SABMiller stake and a share in renewable energy firm Polenergia.

She's also co-founder and president of the Kulczyk Foundation, which advocates for women's rights.

Japan – Yoshiko Mori: $2.2 billion (£1.7bn)

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Yoshiko Mori is Japan's richest woman, having entered the billionaire club after the death of her husband Minoru Mori in 2012. She inherited a chunk of his estate, including a significant stake in his company Mori Building, the firm behind Tokyo's swish Roppongi Hills development.

Mori Building also co-developed the Shanghai World Financial Center, China's sixth-tallest tower. Incidentally, Japan has spawned only one self-made female billionaire, temp-staffing mogul Yoshiko Shinohara.

Her net worth, which hit 10 figures in 2017, currently sits at around $965 million (£755m).

Singapore – Shu Ping: $2.3 billion (£1.8bn)

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Singapore's richest woman is Shu Ping, the director and co-founder of China's number-one hotpot chain Haidilao. The brand launched as a modest four-table restaurant in Jianyang, Sichuan, in 1994.

At the last count, it boasted more than 1,300 outlets in China and around the world. Shu is married to fellow Haidilao co-founder Zhang Yong, who chairs the company.

The couple moved to Singapore in 2018 and have since become naturalised citizens of the city-state.

Vietnam – Thi Phuong Thao Nguyen: $2.9 billion (£2.3bn)

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Vietnam's first self-made billionaire and one of the few rags-to-riches stories in our round-up, Thi Phuong Thao Nguyen made her first million dollars at the age of 21 by importing items as diverse as fax machines and rubber. She later hit the big time as an investor and co-founded the low-cost airline VietJet Air in 2007.

Officially launched in 2011, the airline grabbed headlines early on with its ads featuring bikini-clad flight attendants. Nguyen has donated $200 million (£157m) to the University of Oxford's Linacre College and has several philanthropic foundations that support education, poverty alleviation and healthcare.

South Korea – Hong Ra-hee: $4.1 billion (£3.2bn)

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Notable art collector Hong Ra-hee partly derives her 10-figure net worth from South Korea's largest chaebol (conglomerate), Samsung. Hong is the widow of the group's former chairman, Lee Kun-hee, and inherited a slice of his fortune when he passed away in 2020.

Lee Kun-hee is widely credited with transforming Samsung into the global juggernaut and worldwide household name it is today. However, Hong was independently wealthy before she married Lee; her late father, Hong Jin-ki, was a prominent media tycoon and high-ranking government official.

Mexico – María Asunción Aramburuzabala and family: $6.3 billion (£4.9bn)

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A consummate businesswoman, María Asunción Aramburuzabala has multiplied the fortune she inherited from her father in 1995, which mostly came in the form of a major stake in beer behemoth Grupo Modelo. The company was sold to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2013 for $20 billion (£16.5bn), netting Aramburuzabala an enormous return.

Aramburuzabala formed investment firm Tresalia Capital not long after her father's death and has since amassed an impressive portfolio of lucrative investments, from stakes in Kraft-Heinz and Tory Burch to construction and telecoms holdings.

Italy – Miuccia Prada: $6.5 billion (£5.1bn)

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According to Forbes, Italy's richest woman is pharmaceutical heiress Massimiliana Landini Aleotti, who, along with her two children, owns Menarini, the leading drug firm acquired by her late husband in the 1990s. The family has a fortune of $7.5 billion (£5.9bn).

However, fashion luminary Miuccia Prada (pictured) is Italy's richest standalone woman, as Aleotti shares her fortune with her kids. Forbes pegs the veteran designer's net worth at $6.5 billion (£5.1bn).

Denmark – Agnete Kirk Thinggaard and Sofie Kirk Kristiansen: $6.5 billion (£5.1bn) each

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These two heiresses owe their multibillion-dollar fortunes to billions of colourful plastic bricks. Along with their father Kjeld and brother Thomas, sisters Agnete and Sofie own 75% of LEGO, which was founded by their great-grandfather Ole Kirk Christiansen in 1932.

It's officially the world's largest toy company by revenue, having turned over $9.2 billion (£7.3bn) in 2022. The family also holds a 47.5% stake in theme park giant Merlin Entertainments.

An accomplished equestrienne, Agnete represented Denmark in dressage at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and sits on the board of LEGO holding company Kirkbi, while Sofie (pictured) owns hunting estates in Denmark and Scotland.

Russia – Tatyana Bakalchuk: $7.4 billion (£5.8bn)

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Tatyana Bakalchuk is Russia's second-ever female billionaire, with construction tycoon Elena Baturinia, the country's only non-male oligarch, the first to reach the 10-figure milestone. A former English teacher and mother of seven, Bakalchuk helms e-commerce retailer Wildberries, which she started out of her Moscow apartment in 2004 while on maternity leave.

Russia's answer to Amazon, it's now the nation's leading online marketplace and reportedly processes around seven million orders a day. In 2022, it had a turnover of 317 billion roubles, around $3.4 billion (£2.7bn).

UK – Denise Coates: $9.5 billion (£7.5bn)

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The queen of UK gambling, Denise Coates trained as an accountant before taking over her father's bookmaking business in the 1990s. In 2000, she founded online betting site Bet365 out of a Portakabin in Stoke-on-Trent.

With her brother John, who acts as co-CEO, she turned it into one of the world's largest gambling companies, having sold the family's bricks-and-mortar chain to Coral in 2005 for $49 million (£40m). Consistently among the world's highest-paid executives, for which she's attracted more than her fair share of criticism, Coates earned a record $510 million (£421m) in salary and dividends during the 2020-2021 tax year and pulled in $318 million (£263m) between March 2021 and April 2022.

In the last financial year she earned a salary of $281 million (£221m). According to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, Denise and her family has a net worth of £7.467 billion, the equivalent of $9.5 billion.

Sweden – Antonia Ax:son Johnson and family: $9.8 billion (£7.7bn)

Courtesy Axfoundation

Antonia Ax:son Johnson holds majority ownership of Axel Johnson, the eponymous conglomerate founded by her great-grandfather back in 1873. The group has a swathe of interests, including energy, supermarket chains, and property.

Ax:son Johnson headed the conglomerate from 1982 to 2015 and still sits on the board today. She's also the founder of the Axfoundation, a non-profit working towards building a more sustainable society.

Spain – Sandra Ortega Mera: $10.1 billion (£7.9bn)

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Sandra Ortega Mera is Spain's second-richest person after her father, Amancio Ortega. In 1985, he co-founded Inditex, the parent company of global fashion chains such as Zara, Bershka, and Pull&Bear.

Ortega Mera, who inherited her fortune from her late mother and Inditex co-founder Rosalía Mera, devotes much of her time to the Paideia Foundation, which supports people with disabilities. She owns a 5% stake in pharmaceutical company PharmaMar, which has developed drugs to treat lung cancer and COVID-19, and also invests her money in luxury hotels.

China – Kwong Siu-hing: $11.7 billion (£9.2bn)

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China's rich list has been shaken up over the past couple of years due to the country's troubled property sector. The nation's former richest woman, Yang Huiyan, the chair of ailing developer Country Garden, has seen her wealth plummet from $29.6 billion (£23.5bn) in 2021 to $3.1 billion (£2.4bn) at the time of writing.

The accolade of richest woman now goes to Kwong Siu-hing (pictured), the Hong Kong-based widow of Kwok Tak-seng, who co-founded Sun Hung Kai Properties. She's the biggest shareholder in the real estate company, which, while struggling, is performing better than many of the major developers in mainland China.

Netherlands – Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and family: $14.7 billion (£11.5bn)

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The Netherlands' richest woman, according to Forbes, Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken splits her time between Switzerland and London. For this reason, she appears on the Sunday Times Rich List and is considered by some sources to be the UK's wealthiest female instead of Denise Coates.

As you might have guessed, de Carvalho-Heineken derives her fortune from Heineken, the brewing company founded by her great-grandfather in 1864. She holds a 23% stake in the firm, which she inherited from her late father Freddy in 2002.

Ireland – Alannah Weston and family: $18.5 billion (£14.5bn)

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Dublin-born Alannah Weston is the daughter of late Irish-Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, who died in 2021. Together with three other members of the Weston dynasty, who are collectively worth around $18.5 billion (£14.5bn) according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2024, Alannah controls a retail empire that includes fast-fashion chain Primark and brands such as Silver Spoon and Ryvita.

She served as creative director and chair of the board of Selfridges, the department store chain the family sold in 2021 for $5.4 billion (£4.3bn). An avid philanthropist and sustainability campaigner, Alannah is a trustee of the family's charitable foundation.

Canada – Sherry Brydson: $19.9 billion (£15.6bn)

Courtesy Viking Air

Sherry Brydson is Canada's richest woman. The granddaughter of the late newspaper magnate Roy Thomson, she's the largest shareholder in Woodbridge, the company that controls media titan Thomson Reuters.

Brydson, who is intensely private and shuns the limelight, also owns Longview Aviation Capital, the parent company of Viking Air and De Havilland Canada.

Germany – Susanne Klatten: $24.3 billion (£19bn)

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Bequeathed a 19% stake in BMW by her late parents, Herbert and Johanna Quandt, Susanne Klatten is Germany's richest woman by a long shot. Klatten, an accomplished economist with an MBA, also owns 100% of the chemicals and pharmaceutical giant Altana and serves as its deputy chair.

The businesswoman is a seasoned investor as well, with substantial stakes in credit card maker Entrust and carbon producer SGL.

Australia – Gina Rinehart: $30.8 billion (£24.1bn)

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Gina Rinehart isn't just Australia's richest woman; she's also the wealthiest person in the entire country. A force to be reckoned with, Rinehart has overseen the expansion of Hancock Prospecting, the iron ore exploration company founded by her late father, Lang Hancock.

The firm made a net profit of $5 billion (£3.9bn) in the financial year ending 30 June 2023. Rinehart also owns one of Australia's major cattle producers, which has recently pivoted to producing high-value Wagyu beef, and has interests in natural gas and rare earth elements.

Switzerland – Rafaela Aponte-Diamant: $36.3 billion (£28.4bn)

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The world's wealthiest self-made woman, shipping magnate Rafaela Aponte-Diamant is by far the richest female in Switzerland. She owns 50% of MSC Group, the largest liner company on the planet, while her husband Gianluigi owns the other half.

Aponte-Diamant, who resides in Geneva, started the business with her spouse in 1970 when they took out a $200,000 loan to buy their first ship – that's around $1.6 million (£1.3m) in today's money. In 2022, MSC Group delivered a staggering $38.4 billion (£31bn) profit based on a turnover of $91.7 billion (£74.2bn).

USA – Alice Walton: $78.8 billion (£61.7bn)

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The US has more female billionaires than any other country – and Alice Walton is the richest of them all, with a $78.8 billion (£61.7bn) fortune according to Forbes. The only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, Alice inherited a 13% stake in the retail giant, which provides her with plenty of money to pursue her passion for art.

In 2011, the minted heiress opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas and has funded its many acquisitions, including important works by Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keeffe, and John Singer Sargent.

France – Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and family: $100.8 billion (£78.8bn)

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The richest woman in France – not to mention the world – is Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller. She inherited a third of the cosmetics company in 2017 following the death of her mother Liliane Bettencourt, despite their reportedly fractious relationship.

Françoise is a committed philanthropist, presiding over the family's charitable foundation that supports the arts, life sciences, and social cohesion, and has donated $226 million (£183m) towards the restoration of Paris' fire-damaged Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Now discover more about Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the richest woman in the world