Who is the Richest Woman of 2021?

Kwong Siu-hing controls Hong Kong’s largest property developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties. Her late husband, Kwok Tak-seng, founded the company. The couple had three sons, of which the surviving two, Thomas and Raymond Kwok, are billionaires too.

Christy Walton’s late husband, John T. Walton, was one of the siblings who inherited the Walmart fortune from their father, Sam Walton. She not only inherited part of his Walmart shares but also his shares in First Solar, which makes solar panels. However, most of John T. Walton’s fortune went to their son Lukas, who then became one of the richest people under 35.

Massimiliana Landini Aleotti and her children inherited Italian pharma company Menarini from her late husband, Alberto Aleotti. Menarini developed a rapid test for Covid-19 as the disease swept through Italy.

One of the world’s richest self-made women, Wu Yajun started her career by working in a factory before becoming a journalist and editor. Journalism allowed her to network and in 1995, she co-founded the real-estate company that would become Longfor Properties with her then husband.

Kirsten Rausing was born in Sweden, but lives in the United Kingdom, where she is one of that country’s wealthiest people. Her fortunes comes from the business her grandfather Ruben Rausing founded, Tetra Pak.

Working in a Chinese pesticide factory, it may have seemed that Lu Zhongfang was well on her way to retire broke. However, a few years after she retired from the factory she invested in a new company called Offcn. She owns an 18 per cent stake in the company, which her son, Li Yongxin, now chairs.

Her law degree could have landed Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken one of the highest-paying jobs in the world but she doesn’t really need to work. Still, she’s executive director of – and owns a 25 per cent controlling stake in — the family business, the Heineken brewing company, which isn’t a bad trade-off.

While many of the top richest women in the world all inherited their wealth, Zhong Huijuan made her fortune all on her own. The former chemistry teacher founded and owns Hansoh Pharmaceutical, which went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2019. Her husband, Sun Piaoyang, is also one of China’s new crop of pharma billionaires.

Laurene Powell Jobs is the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and lives in Palo Alto, one of the best places for tech start-ups. While she inherited most of her wealth from her husband, she is an entrepreneur and investor too. She has three university degrees, one of which is an MBA from Stanford, where she met Jobs.

Iris Fontbona and her family inherited control of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta upon the death of her husband, Andrónico Luksic Abaroa. They also control other Chilean businesses, among them a brewing company, a shipping company and Banco de Chile. Intensely private, Fontbona is one of the few billionaires who are single.

Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, may have received a head start in life when she inherited Hancock Prospecting from her father, Lang Hancock, but she was the one who expanded the company and, with that, her fortune. Money didn’t bring her a happy family life, however: three of her children took her to court to remove her as trustee of the trust fund their grandfather had started for them.

Abigail Johnson heads Fidelity Investments, the company started by her grandfather, Edward C. Johnson II. She joined the family business upon graduating from Harvard Business School and Forbes considers her one of the world’s most powerful women.

German native Susanne Klatten inherited her father’s majority stake in pharma company Altana, as well as stakes in BMW from both her parents, Herbert and Johanna Quandt. After she got a degree in business finance and an MBA, she often worked under an alias to hide her wealthy background. She has since become sole owner of Altana.

China is one of the countries with the most billionaires and its richest woman is Yang Huiyan, a property developer. Her father, Yang Guoqiang, transferred his shares in the company he founded, Country Garden Holdings, to her in 2007.

Jacqueline Mars can thank chocolate for her wealth. Her grandfather, Frank C. Mars, founded Mars Inc. and her father, Forrest Mars Sr., gave the world the Milky Way and Mars bars as well as M&Ms. Jacqueline has a degree in anthropology but worked in the family business until her retirement in 2001.

Coming in fifth place on the list is Adelson, who now controls a 56 per cent stake in casino operator Las Vegas Sands. Formerly owned her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, who died in early 2021, the casinos faced a loss due to Covid shutdowns, but Adelson still made bank. Lots of bank.

After going on a blind date with David Koch, the then-Julia Flesher said that she was glad she’d met him but knew she would never want to go out with him. Luckily for her, she changed her mind and married him instead. Upon his death, Julia Koch and their three children inherited his fortune, including a 42 per cent stake in Koch Industries, the business that made the Kochs one of the world’s richest families.

MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) is an award-winning author, but this is not where her wealth comes from. In 2019, she got a cool $35 billion, much of it in Amazon stock, as part of her divorce settlement from Jeff Bezos. A month after reaching this settlement, she signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to donate at least half her fortune to charity.

Alice Walton was the world’s richest woman in 2018, dropped to second place in 2019, moved to to No. 1 in 2020, and then has dropped back to No. 2 in 2021. She and her brothers inherited their fortunes from their father, Sam Walton, who founded Walmart. These days she’s mostly known for founding the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art but she was also instrumental in creating the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.

Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers has always ranked in the top three of the annual Forbes list. She inherited her fortune from her mother, Liliane Bettencourt, who in turn inherited her fortune from her father, L’Oréal founder Eugène Schueller. She is an author, mainly of works on religion.