L’Oreal Heiress Is the First Woman To Amass $100B Fortune

L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the first woman to amass a fortune worth $100 billion. Her net worth was revealed on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023.

Bettencourt Meyers was listed on the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, where she lands as the world’s 12th richest person. L’Oreal, the biggest cosmetics company in the world, was founded by her grandfather, Eugène Schueller, in France in 1909 after acquiring rival brands, including Lancome, Kiehl’s, and Maybelline.

Bettencourt Meyers is the only child of Schueller’s daughter, Liliane Bettencourt. She was regularly named one of France’s richest women. She maintained close ties with French leaders and enjoyed being in the spotlight. After Bettencourt’s 2017 death, Bettencourt Meyers inherited her mother’s stake in the company.

L’Oreal is worth $268 billion, according to Bloomberg. Bettencourt Meyers and her family owned almost 35% of its stock, making them the biggest shareholders. The company had more than $42 billion in sales in 2022, according to reports.

Per The New York Post, Bettencourt Meyers is the chairwoman of the family’s holding company. Her husband, Jean-Pierre Meyers, is the CEO.

Bettencourt Meyers is also the vice chairwoman of the L’Oreal Group’s board of directors. Her sons, Jean-Victor Meyers and Nicolas Meyers, are also directors.

In 2010, a dispute between Bettencourt Meyers and her mother turned into a national political scandal involving recordings made by a former butler that led to investigations into Nicolas Sarkozy, then France’s president, and another government official. Their story is a Netflix docuseries titled “The Butler, The Billionaire and The Boyfriend.”

A bitter court battle between mother and daughter began as a mere family dispute after Liliane’s roughly $1.3 billion in gifts to a friend made her daughter question whether her elderly mother was fit to manage the family’s wealth.

Bettencourt Meyers has written two books. One is a five-volume study of the Bible, and the second is a genealogy of the Greek gods. She is known for playing piano for hours every day.