Top 10 Wealthiest Women in the World (& How They Earned Their Fortunes)

You might have some of her products in your kitchen right now. Resnick and her husband co-own The Wonderful Company, which is the parent company of FIJI Water, Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful, and several other brands. Combined, they give Resnick a net worth of about $6.3 billion. Resnick’s background is in marketing, and her talents have been no small part of the company’s success. In 2009, her flower brand, Teleflora, aired a Super Bowl ad that was voted one of the best of the year. And the “get crackin'” campaign for Wonderful Pistachios landed a host of celebrities in the 2000s and 2010s. As Resnick herself likes to say, “It takes a nut to sell a nut.”

Talk about the American dream! Lee was born in Bangkok, grew up in South Korea, and immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager. In 1985, she became the first Korean woman to graduate from Harvard Business School. In 1989, she and her then-husband bought a small, struggling software company. They renamed it SHI, and over the next several decades, they expanded it into a multi-billion-dollar international IT and cybersecurity operation. Lee and her husband divorced in 2002, but she’s still co-owner, CEO, and president of the company. SHI is now the largest woman-owned business in the United States, and Lee boasts a personal net worth of around $7 billion.

She built her fortune on a huge gamble – literally. Coates is the co-founder and joint CEO of bet365, a British online gambling company. Her family previously owned a couple of betting shops, but in the early days of the internet, Coates saw the potential in online betting. She founded bet365 in 2000, and it quickly grew to become one of the biggest sports betting sites and virtual casinos in the world. Today, it handles over $65 billion in bets every year, and Coates herself has a net worth of around $7.2 billion. However, she and the company haven’t been immune to criticism. Bet365 has been the subject of multiple scandals for refusing to pay out large winnings, among other issues.

She founded a massively successful online store called Wildberries, which has been described as the Amazon of Russia. But being the richest woman in the country still has its problems. In 2024, Kim divorced her husband and initiated a merger with a major Russian advertising company. Her ex didn’t respond well to either of these events. Reportedly, he and his security team invaded Wildberries’ Moscow headquarters and opened fire, killing two security guards. However, the hostile takeover attempt failed, and both the divorce and the merger were finalized. The size of Tatyana Kim’s fortune has fluctuated with the business, spiking to $13 billion in 2021 and settling at $7.4 billion prior to the merger.

Healthcare and IT are two of the hottest industries in America. If you can combine them into one business, you’re going to make money. No one knows that better than Faulkner, who founded medical records software company Epic back in 1979. Today, Epic handles records for more than 250 million people around the world. Plus, it has what might be the coolest corporate campus in America, full of buildings decorated in themes like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “Harry Potter.” Faulkner’s current net worth is around $7.7 billion. However, she pours hundreds of millions of dollars into philanthropy, and in 2015, she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to eventually give away almost all of her fortune.

Also known as Grace Wang, she’s one of the richest women in China with a net worth of $8.6 billion. After working for electronics manufacturer Foxconn for 10 years, Wang left the company to start her own business with her brother. In 2004, they founded Luxshare Precision Industry, which makes computer cables and Apple Airpods, among other tech products. With over $32 billion in revenue and more than 200,000 employees, Luxshare has been hugely successful. It turned Wang into one of the youngest female self-made billionaires in the world at just 46 years old.

From middle school chemistry teacher to pharmaceuticals billionaire, she became the wealthiest self-made woman in Asia when her company went public in 2019. She founded Hansoh Pharmaceutical in 1995, which produces cancer treatments, antibiotics, and a range of other drugs. The business’s value spiked again when it began developing COVID treatments in 2020. Zhong’s husband runs a different billion-dollar drug maker, but currently, her net worth of $10.9 billion is just slightly more than his fortune of $9.3 billion. Zhong’s daughter, Sun Yuan, is the executive director of Hansoh, meaning this family is basically royalty in the Chinese pharmaceuticals industry.

Another billionaire who made her money in tech, Zhou grew up in poverty. She was the only one of her siblings who was able to attend high school, but she dropped out at age 16 to get a job in a factory. At 22, she founded a small company that made watch parts, and later transitioned to producing cell phone screens. When the mobile phone industry began to boom in the early 2000s, Zhou started another company, Lens Technology, to respond to the demand. The timing couldn’t have been better. Today, Lens Technology makes touch screens for Apple, Samsung, Tesla, and other major brands, and Zhou boasts a net worth of $11.6 billion.

Currently the richest self-made woman in America, Hendricks built her fortune through a roofing company. She and her husband Ken founded ABC Supply in 1982, and it’s now the biggest distributor of roofing supplies, windows, gutters, and siding in the country. After Ken passed away in 2007, Diane began making acquisitions, scooping up a rival company in 2010 and a building materials distributor in 2016. Since then, Hendricks’ wealth has skyrocketed. Forbes estimated her fortune at $3.9 billion in 2017, and today it’s nearly $22 billion. Hendricks has also dabbled in other industries, working as an executive producer on a handful of movies and TV series and serving as an economic advisor to Donald Trump in 2016.

She was born in Palestine and grew up in Switzerland, and she met her husband during a trip to Italy. He was a boat captain and she was a passenger – which is fitting, since they’d go on to make their fortune in shipping. They bought their first ship in 1970 with a $200,000 loan. Today, their business, Mediterranean Shipping Company, or MSC, is the biggest shipping line on the planet. The Apontes also run MSC Cruises, which is the world’s largest privately owned cruise company. As 50% owner of MSC, Aponte-Diamant’s fortune is estimated to be worth $36.8 billion.

If you got rich, which industry would you make your fortune in? Let us know in the comments.