Walmart heiress Alice Walton has solidified her position as the world’s richest woman for the second consecutive year, according to the latest Forbes World’s Billionaires ranking, with an eye-popping estimated fortune of $134 billion.
This staggering wealth, derived primarily from her roughly 11% stake in the retail behemoth founded by her father, Sam Walton, underscores her enduring dominance among female billionaires.
Walton, 75, first claimed the top spot in September 2024 after overtaking French L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, and she has maintained—and expanded—that lead amid robust gains in Walmart’s stock value.
Trailing Walton is Bettencourt Meyers, whose net worth stands at approximately $100 billion, buoyed by her controlling interest in the global cosmetics empire. In third place is Julia Koch, widow of industrialist David Koch, with an estimated $81.2 billion. These figures highlight how inherited wealth continues to propel many of the highest-ranking women on the list.
A notable shift in the upper echelons comes from Chilean heiress Iris Fontbona, whose fortune from mining and beverage holdings has surged to $52.6 billion, propelling her to fourth place. This marks a significant rise for Fontbona, who previously sat outside the top 10. She edges out Jacqueline Mars, the candy and pet food heiress, now in fifth with $49.1 billion.
Among the top 10 richest women globally, only one is self-made: Swiss shipping magnate Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, co-founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), valued at $44.5 billion. Despite slipping from fifth to sixth, Aponte-Diamant remains a rare outlier in a landscape where inherited fortunes predominate.
This year’s Forbes list tallies 3,428 billionaires worldwide, of whom 481—or 14%—are women, a modest increase from 406 (13.4%) the previous year. Yet self-made female billionaires remain a minority: just 122 out of the 481 women built their own wealth, up slightly from 113 last year. The next highest self-made woman after Aponte-Diamant is American roofing entrepreneur Diane Hendricks, with $22.3 billion.
The list also spotlights rising stars in the self-made category. Music icon Beyoncé makes her debut as a billionaire with a net worth of $1 billion, joining fellow entertainers Rihanna (also $1 billion), Spanx founder Sara Blakely ($1.4 billion), and Taylor Swift ($2 billion) as women who have parlayed creative and business acumen into nine-figure fortunes.
In a striking symbol of generational change, 29-year-old Brazilian entrepreneur Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of the prediction market platform Kalshi, has emerged as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Her rapid ascent—following a major funding round that valued Kalshi at $11 billion—displaces previous titleholder Lucy Guo, the 31-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, who holds $1.4 billion.
Other notable movements include the displacement of philanthropists Melinda French Gates ($30.3 billion) and Marilyn Simons ($32.5 billion) from higher rankings, as Chinese aluminum industry figure Zheng Shuliang ($33.2 billion), vice chair of a company founded by her late husband, and Fontbona climbed ahead.
While the overall representation of women among billionaires inches upward, the concentration of extreme wealth among heiresses persists.
Walton’s sustained reign, fueled by Walmart’s resilience in consumer markets, serves as a reminder of the enduring power of legacy fortunes—even as fresh waves of self-made innovators, from pop superstars to tech disruptors, begin reshaping the lower tiers of the list.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Alice Walton remains the world’s richest woman for the second straight year with $134 billion, far ahead of all others. The single most important takeaway: inherited wealth—especially from family retail and consumer empires—continues to dominate the very top of the female billionaire list, while self-made women, though growing in number, remain concentrated in the lower tiers.
