World’s Richest Women

Gentlemen, start your motors! These ladies are the richest women in the world and they mean business — sometimes. Collectively, the world’s richest women control $116.4 billion. This means that women billionaires control 13% of billionaire-owned wealth. How lucky for us!

Compared to the 2,039 men in the world who are billionaires, there are only 268 women who are members of the billionaires’ club. Sixty-five percent of the women inherited their wealth through their gene pool or matrimony.

CNN tells us that Christy Walton (Walmart) tops the Wealth-X list as the world’s richest woman with $37.9 billion in her piggy bank. Mrs. Walton has held this title for seven years running. Her husband, John Walton, died in 2005 and she inherited a big chunk of the Walmart fortune plus other wise investments he had made along the way.

Coming in second place is the world’s oldest female billionaire and richest European woman, Liliane Bettencourt.. At 92, the L’oreal heiress bags an estimated $31.3 billion. Does ‘we try harder’ or ‘all-in-one’ apply here?

The youngest is 33-year-old Yang Huiyan, whose father transferred seventy percent of his shares in a Chinese real estate development firm before its IPO and then dumped $6.3 billion into her account. All in a day’s work.

Oprah Winfrey — TV mogul, author, actress, humanitarian, and also the only African-American to make it on the list as one of the world’s richest women — is a self-made billionaire. The 60-year-old Winfrey has a net worth estimated around the $3 billion mark.

The Christian Science Monitor reveals Winfrey tops the list of the nine self-made richest women in the world. Doris Fisher, who founded Gap stores with her husband in 1969, has a net worth of $2.8 billion.

Lest we think this is really a Miss America contest, out of China is Zhang Xin, sitting pretty at $3.6 billion. After a stint working on Wall Street and for Goldman Sachs, she and her husband tried their hand at real estate in 1995 and now head up Beijing’s largest property developer, Soho China.

There are more women billionaires in China than any other country, largely due to the explosion in real estate development. Wu Yujan has made a cool $4.3 billion in the real estate sector.

Diane Hendricks, cashing in with a net worth of $3.8 billion, co-founded ABC Supply, the largest wholesale distributor of roofing, window, and siding materials in the U.S. with her late husband, Kenneth.

The Inquisitr tells us that Forbes believes women are actually better at making money than men. The nicest part about having so much money is the potential to help a lot of other people.

Win, lose or draw, most of these remarkable women make the ‘A List’ when it comes to sharing their wealth with the world. This in turn is what really makes them the “World’s Richest Women” — and we can take that to the bank.