The Richest Women In The World 2025 I Forbes

Women remain woefully underrepresented on Forbes' world's billionaires list, but their numbers are slowly increasing. This year, 406 of the planet's 3,028 billionaires are women, good for 13.4% of the list. That's up a hair from 13.3% in 2024. The richest woman of all is Walmart heir Alice Walton, whose fortune stands at an estimated $101 billion. She reclaims a title from French L'Oreal heiress Francois Benicourt-Meyers, who now ranks second, at $81.6 billion. Benicourt-Meyers and Walton have battled for the number one spot among women for the past half decade. In June, Benicourt-Meyers made history as the first woman to hit an estimated net worth of $100 billion. By early September, Walton had returned to the prime spot amid a jump in Walmart shares and drop in L'Oreal's. Julia Koch, the widow of industrialist David Koch, and Jacqueline Mars, an heir to the Mars confectionery fortune, remain the third and fourth richest women. In all, nine of the ten wealthiest women on the list inherited their fortunes. The richest self-made woman is Raffaella Aponte-Diamant, the Swiss co-founder of the world's largest shipping line, whose net worth is $37.7 billion. She ranks as the fifth wealthiest woman of all, and one of just 113 self-made women on the list. Others include Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift, whose fortune rose 45% over the past year as her heiress tour raked in an estimated $2 billion, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time. Two women lost their spot among the top ten women. Australian mining magnate Gina Reinhardt, whose net worth fell nearly 5% amid weak iron ore prices. And Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, who continues to give big donations to philanthropic causes. They were replaced by Melinda French-Gates, ex-wife of Bill Gates, and newcomer Marilyn Simons, the widow of hedge fund legend Jim Simons, who died in May 2024. Other newcomers include pharmaceutical billionaire Martine Rothblatt, who founded the multi-billion dollar company United Therapeutics, and Tatiana Volodina, who owns the billion-dollar Russian cosmetics retailer L'Etoile.