Only 14 of the world’s 1,000 billionaires are self-made women, and only seven of them had no help from relatives, a new list has found.
By contrast, 665 men are self-made billionaires including the three richest people in the world, Carlos Slim Helú , Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Among the list are talk-show star Oprah Winfrey, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and former eBay head, Meg Whitman.
The richest on the list was Chinese real estate billionaire Wu Yajun, whose fortune is worth $US3.9 billion.
With 57 billion dollars net worth Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has recovered his spot at the top of the US money heap, displacing investor Warren Buffett as America’s richest person, Forbes magazine’s latest list reveals.
According to Forbes, whose list was published late Wednesday, the golden 400 have 1.3 billion dollars net worth or more. However, the assembled net worth of the richest Americans rose by only 2%, or $30 billion, to $1.57 trillion this year. The average net worth of Forbes 400 members is $3.9 billion.
Forbes said that rising oil and dizzy art prices fuelled the entry of 31 new members into the ultra-rich club and the return of eight previous members.
Liliane Bettencourt, daughter of Eugene Schueller, the man who founded cosmetics giant L’Oréal, tops Forbes’ just-released list of the richest women in Europe with a fortune of $22.9 billion.
That also makes her the world’s richest woman and the 17th richest person on earth, according to Forbes. She is also the second richest person in France, after Bernard Arnault who has an estimated wealth of $26.0 billion.
Following Bettencourt on Europe’s female rich list is a Swedish citizen Birgit Rausing, a packaging heiress with an estimated fortune of $14 billion, while No. 3 is BMW and pharmaceuticals heiress Susanne Klatten, with $13.2 billion.
