Who is the richest woman in the world?

The death of French heiress Liliane Bettencourt of L’Oréal fortune earlier this year, two women are now considered as the richest women in the world.

One is Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who has a net worth of about $44 billion in November, according to Forbes. And the other is Bettencourt’s daughter Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the 64-year-old heiress who now has a net worth of $42 billion, according to Bloomberg.


In 2011 Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. The heiress has not been heavily involved in the family business, but is an active art patron who opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., in 2011.

Though she rarely gives interviews or appears in front of the media, Bettencourt’s daughter is known as an academic and an avid pianist according to Bloomberg.

Bettencourt passed away at age 94 in September 2017 at a time when she was worth about $39.5 billion, according to Forbes. She was among the top 20 richest people in the world overall, according to Forbes. Her father, Eugene Schueller, founded the iconic cosmetics company L’Oréal in 1907, and Bettencourt owned a third of the makeup brand with her children.