For the first time in history a woman has a wealth of 100 billion dollars. She is Françoise Bettencourt Meyers70 years old, French, heir to the empire L’Oréal, the world’s largest beauty and cosmetics group. According to the calculations of Forbeshis luck is now to 101.2 billion. What pushed it over the threshold on Wednesday 5 June was a 0.8% increase in L’Oréal shares.
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The story of Françoise Bettencourt Meyers
Bettencourt Meyers was born on July 10, 1953 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. She is the granddaughter of Eugène Schueller, the French pharmacist who founded L’Oréal, and the only child of Liliane Bettencourt, who at the time of her death in 2017 was the richest woman in the world. She has been on the group’s board of directors since 1997 and chairs the family holding. She supported her business activity writing books about religion and hearing.
Born into a Catholic family, in 1984 Bettencourt Meyers married Jean-Pierre Meyers, nephew of the former rabbi of Neuilly-sur-Seine, in Fiesole, near Florence. She converted to Judaism and wrote a six-volume book dedicated to the relationship between Catholics and Jews: Les Trompettes de Jéricho: Regard sur la Bible. Mieux se comprendre entre juifs et catholiques (‘The trumpets of Jericho: a look at the Bible. Better understanding between Jews and Catholics’).
In France there was a lot of talk about her wedding to Meyers, whose grandfather had been deported to Auschwitz. Schueller, as reported among others by the Guardian in 2010, he had in fact sympathized with the Nazis and, during Hitler’s occupation, had written for a collaborationist and anti-Semitic newspaper.
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The Bettencourt case
Despite always trying to keep a low profile, Bettencourt Meyers was at the center of another scandal, the so-called Bettencourt case. As he explainedEconomist in 2010, the story arose when Bettencourt Meyers accused the photographer François-Marie Banier, a photographer friend of her mother, of having taken advantage of the woman’s seniority and weakness to obtain gifts worth around 1 billion euros.
The family saga became an affair of state. Some recordings revealed alleged illicit financing for the party of the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a possible conflict of interest of the finance minister and treasurer of the same party, Eric Woerth, whose wife worked in the company that managed Liliane’s assets Bettencourt. The politicians were cleared, while Banier was convicted.
The L’Oréal empire
Bettencourt Meyers is the 16th richest person in the world and the first woman. With a 34.73% stake, she is the largest shareholder of L’Oréal, which closed 2023 with a turnover of 41 billion euros.
The origin of the group dates back to 1907, when Bettencourt Meyers’ grandfather devised a hair coloring formula he called Oréale. Two years later Schueller established his first company, the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux (French harmless hair dye company), which took the name L’Oréal in 1939. Today, the group’s brands include Maybelline, Lancôme and Garnier.
The richest women in the world
Below is the ranking of the ten richest women in the world. All figures are expressed in dollars and are updated as of 11am on Thursday 6 June.
1 | Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and family
Assets: 101.2 billion
2 | Alice Walton
Assets: 78.8 billion
3 | Julia Koch and family
Assets: 65.5 billion
4 | Jacqueline Mars
Assets: 38.9 billion
5 | Savitri Jindal and family
Assets: 38 billion
6 | Rafaela Aponte-Diamant
Assets: 36.3 billion
7 | Mackenzie Scott
Assets: 33.8 billion
8 | Gina Rinehart
Assets: 30.8 billion
9 | Miriam Adelson and family
Assets: 29.3 billion
10 | Iris Fontbona and family
Assets: 29.2 billion
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