Françoise Bettencourt Meyers stunned the world when, late last year, she became the first woman to amass a fortune of $100 billion through her ownership of the cosmetics giant L’Oréal.
She held the title of richest woman for a few months, even though her fortune has tumbled to $89.9 billion since the start of 2024.
But Bettencourt Meyers has just lost the crown to the heiress of another business empire, this one across the Atlantic.
Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, saw her wealth leap to $95.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Walmart’s shares have surged over 43% so far in 2024, propping up Walton’s wealth in the process.
The two women are part of families with enduring legacies in beauty and mass retail, respectively. L’Oréal was founded 115 years ago in Paris and ranks No. 90 on the Fortune 500 Europe list. Meanwhile, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 for the 12th consecutive year, with annual revenue of $648 billion for the 2024 fiscal year.
L’Oréal’s multigenerational fortune
Bettencourt Meyers, 71, is an academic by training. She serves as chair of the family holding company that controls a majority of L’Oréal, called Téthys. She is also vice chairwoman of the board at the company her grandfather founded in the early 20th century.
Bettencourt Meyers and her family own about 35% of the beauty group, which was passed on from her mother, Liliane, after she died in 2017. The heiress is known to be private, so little is known about her life outside L’Oréal. Her two sons have seats on the company’s board.
L’Oréal, which owns well-known brands like Lancôme, Aesop, La Roche Posay, and Maybelline, has become a global company. Although it’s had its fair share of struggles with stagnating business and sluggish demand in China, it has seen strong earnings recently.
The company is one of France’s crown jewels in the business world. But Bettencourt Meyers’s wealth trails far behind that of LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, whose net worth currently stands at $196 billion.
Walmart’s heiress and the world’s richest woman
Walton is a philanthropist and the 18th wealthiest person in the world today. She runs one of the two family holding companies, Walton Enterprises, which runs Walmart, from which much of her fortune derives.
Walmart has had a stunning run as America’s largest company operating in physical and e-commerce retail. The company has cemented its position by offering the lowest prices and being easy to access for the average American through its affiliates, such as Sam’s Club. The company hit $1 billion in annual sales in 1980 and has managed to hold on to its clout as a corporate behemoth, outsizing tech giants like Amazon and Apple in revenue.
Walton shares the stake in the company her father founded with her brothers, Rob, Jim, and John. She pursued a career in finance and even started her own investment bank, Llama Co., which ceased operations in 1998.
She is now a philanthropist and founded the nonprofit organization Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, to which she and the Walton family gifted her art collection as well as a 120-acre plot of land.
