Alice Walton is world’s richest woman 2025

For the first time in five years, there’s a new richest woman on Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list. With an estimated $101 billion fortune,

Alice Walton has taken back the title from L’Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France, who had claimed the crown since the 2021 list and who now ranks as the world’s second-richest woman (estimated net worth: $81.6 billion).

only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton (d. 1992), Alice Walton is $28.7 billion richer than last year, thanks to a 40 per cent increase in the value of her estimated 11 per cent stake in the retail giant, which saw shoppers flock to its “Every Day Low Prices” amid high inflation. 

Bettencourt Meyers, on the other hand, is $17.9 billion poorer, after those same market forces helped send shares of the cosmetics conglomerate her grandfather Eugène Schueller (d. 1957) founded spiraling by nearly 20 per cent

Walton, 75, is one of 15 members of the $100 Billion Club—those with fortunes spanning 12 digits—this year. She’s the second woman to ever reach centibillionaire status, following Bettencourt Meyers, 71, who accomplished the feat in June 2024.

Walton ranks as the 15th richest person in the world, a few spots behind her brothers Rob Walton, 80, and Jim Walton, 76, who are worth $110 billion and $109 billion, respectively.

After graduating from Trinity University in Texas in 1971, Alice Walton worked briefly as a buyer of children’s clothes at Walmart, before taking a job in New Orleans as a stockbroker for E.F. Hutton.

She returned to her family’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas during the 1980s to run investment operations at the Waltons’ Arvest Bank, before launching a lending and brokerage shop of her own called Llama with $19.5 million of family money. When Llama shut down in 1998, Walton moved back to Texas and shifted her focus to curating art.