Dominique Senequier

Dominique Senequier was barely 18 when she first found herself in a tiny minority within a male-dominated world: She was among the first seven women to attend France’s most select university. That experience served her well when she launched the first private equity firm for France’s AXA Group. She and others bought the firm out from the insurance giant in 2013, renaming it Ardian. Decades since her university days, Ardian’s founder and CEO still sits atop a heavily male sector, commanding one of Europe’s biggest private equity firms, with $169 billion in assets under management—a 10.7% increase from 2023; its investor count rose nearly 15% to 1,650. The growth belies questions over Ardian’s future. In 2023 Senequier appointed a fiveperson management team (all men) under her. But Senequier is the sole remaining member of the founding team, and unlike KKR and Blackstone, whose aging leaders recently established succession plans, she has yet to signal who will next lead the firm. While Senequier divides her time between Paris and New York, she’s still a towering figure in France’s cloistered power set, which feted her last year in Paris’s sumptuous opera house, celebrating Ardian’s 10th anniversary.