22 Richest Women in America and How They Got Their Wealth

Society typically looks up to and cherishes the richest women in America as if they were royalty.

Some of these ladies are exceedingly fortunate to have accumulated their fortunes through hard labor, while others have inherited their wealth.  

These 22 women are the richest in America. They may not purchase their own country but can buy some of the most luxurious items.

1. Alice Walton: Estimated Net Worth $68 Billon

On October 7, 1949, Alice Louise Walton became the heiress to Walmart’s fortune in the United States. She is now the richest woman in America.   

In addition, Sam Walton’s only daughter, Alice Walton, is Walmart’s CEO. She has focused on curating art rather than working at Walmart, as her brothers, Rob and Jim, have done.

However, in 2011, she founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. 

Furthermore, Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, and Mark Rothko are represented in Crystal Bridges. She intended to construct a holistic health institute in Bentonville in January 2020, aiming for America’s “broken” healthcare system.

Furthermore, In February, she received the Getty Medal for her contributions to the field. 

2. Mackenzie Scott:  Estimated Net Worth $55.5 Billion

Mackenzie Scott was born on April 7, 1970. She is an American novelist, philanthropist, and billionaire businesswoman.

Additionally, MacKenzie Scott is an author and the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. She was married to him for 25 years, but they divorced in mid-2019.  

As part of the divorce settlement, Bezos gave Scott 25% of his Amazon stock, which amounted to 4% of the company.

Furthermore, she signed the Giving Pledge in May 2019, shortly after announcing her divorce conditions on Twitter.  

Scott and Bezos met in 1992 while working at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund. The following year, they married and relocated to Seattle.  

However, Scott, who has two novels to his credit, was a Princeton student and research assistant for Toni Morrison.

Scott announced over $6 billion in contributions to 500 NGOs in 2020 and another $2.7 billion to 286 organizations in June 2021. 

3. Julia Koch: Estimated Net Worth 46.1 Billion 

Julia Margaret Flesher Koch, an American socialite, billionaire, philanthropist, and one of the world’s richest women was born on April 12, 1962.

Furthermore, Julia Koch and her three children received a 42% share in Koch Industries from David Koch.  

Who died in August 2019 at 79? Koch, an Iowa native, was an assistant to fashion designer Adolfo in New York City in the 1980s.

Furthermore, she worked with several of his high-profile customers, including Nancy Reagan, the First Lady.  

Julia met David on a blind date in 1991; six months later, they reconnected, began dating, and married in 1996.

She gave $10 million to Mount Sinai Medical Center and $10 million to Stanford Children’s Hospital to research food allergies with her late husband. 

4. Jacqueline Mars: Estimated Net Worth $32.3 Billion 

Jacqueline Mars is an American heiress and investor born October 10, 1939. However, Jacqueline Mars is Frank C’s granddaughter.

Mars is the daughter of Forrest Edward Mars, Sr., the founder of the American candy firm Mars, Incorporated, from which she derives much of her wealth.  

In addition, her stake in the Mars family has made her the world’s 52nd-richest person and America’s 26th-richest person.

She is an American citizen with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College.  

Furthermore, her fortune is mainly derived from the family that gave her Mars and formed Mars’s confectionery company.

Skittles, M&Ms, Mars Bar, Starburst, and Snickers, are just a few of the popular candy brands owned by Mars, Inc., and popular snack foods like Combos and Altoids.    

5. Miriam Adelson: Estimated Net Worth $28.4 Billion

Miriam Adelson is an American doctor, political donor, and casino heiress born in Israel. She is also one of the richest women in America.  

Additionally, Sheldon Adelson, the former CEO and Chairman of casino company Las Vegas Sands, died in January 2021 at the age of 87.

Miriam Adelson is his widow. She owns over half of the $48 billion gaming conglomerate, which operates casinos in Las Vegas, Singapore, and Macau.  

Furthermore, as GOP megadonors, Miriam and Sheldon Adelson contributed $180 million to Republican races and political action organizations in 2020.

She was born in Israel and trained as a medical doctor specializing in addiction.  

She and Sheldon launched the Sheldon G. Adelson Research Clinic in Las Vegas, specializing in treating opioid addiction. 

6. Abigail Johnson: Estimated Net Worth $23.5 Billion

Abigail Johnson was born on December 19, 1961. She has been the CEO and chairperson of Fidelity Investments since 2014, when she took over for her father.

Furthermore, in 2018, Fidelity launched a platform that allows institutional investors to trade Bitcoin and ether. Johnson has also embraced cryptocurrencies.  

After completing a Harvard M.B.A., she spent summers at Fidelity, then joined full-time as an analyst in 1988.

Edward Johnson II, her grandfather, created the Boston-based mutual fund behemoth in 1946. She owns a 24.5 percent stake in the company, which manages $3.8 trillion in assets. 

7. Laurene Powell Jobs: Estimated Net Worth 21.6 Billion

Laurene Powell is a model and actress. Jobs is best known for being the widow of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.

Laurene became one of the world’s richest women after Steve died in 2011. While you would think her riches stem from Steve’s Apple stock, the Jobs family’s income primarily derives from a substantial interest in Disney.  

Furthermore, in 2006, Steve sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4 billion. In the transaction, he obtained 138 million Disney shares or around 7% of the total number of shares outstanding.

As a result, he became the largest individual shareholder in Disney, with shares valued at $8 billion at the time of his death. His Apple stock was “only” at his death, worth roughly $2 billion. 

8. Diane Hendricks: Estimated Net worth $11.1 Billion

Diane Hendricks is the CEO of ABC Supply, one of the country’s top roofing, siding, and window product wholesalers.

Furthermore, In 1982, Hendricks and her late husband, Ken, cofounded Beloit, Wisconsin. She had been in charge of it since he died in 2007.  

In addition, she was the driving force behind ABC’s two most significant acquisitions, rival Bradco in 2010 and building supplies wholesaler L&W Supply in 2016.

The company has approximately 800 outlets and expects to generate over $12 billion in revenue in 2020. 

9. Blair Parry-Okeden: Estimated Net worth $9.8 Billion

Blair Parry-Okeden was born in the Hawaiian city of Honolulu in 1952. She is reportedly the granddaughter of Cox Enterprises founder James M. Cox.

Parry-grandfather Okeden purchased the Dayton Daily News in 1898 and formed the corporation in Dayton, Ohio.  

Cox later ran for President of the United States as a Democratic candidate in the 1920 presidential election but was unsuccessful.  

However, Blair Parry-Okeden received 25% of the company’s stock after her mother died in 2007. Her brother, Jim Kennedy, is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of the $15 billion firm. 

10. Ann Walton Kroenke: Estimated Net Worth $9.3 Billion

Ann Walton, born on December 18, 1948, is one of the richest women in America. She is the daughter of Bud Walton. Bud helped his brother, Sam, create Walmart into a retail behemoth.  

When Bud died in 1995, Ann Walton received a portion of his stock in the company. Furthermore, Walton-Kroenke, a registered nurse, is not a board member or executive at Walmart.  

Stan Kroenke, a millionaire real estate and sports entrepreneur, is her husband.

He owns the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids, and Arsenal Football Club in the United Kingdom. 

11. Nancy Walton Laurie: Estimated Net worth $8.5 Billion

She is the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton’s brother and business associate Bud Walton. She was born in May 1951.

Bill Laurie is her husband. Ann Walton Kroenke is her sister. She is also one of the richest women in America.   

However, Walton Laurie and her husband, Bill, also have a commercial real estate portfolio, multiple houses, and two yachts. In 2013, they donated $10 million to their alma mater, the University of Memphis.  

When her daughter was a teenager, Walton Laurie became involved in dancing and served on the board of trustees of Julliard. 

12. Judy Faulkner: Estimated Net worth $6.5 Billion

Judy Faulkner is one of the richest women in America. Epic, America’s top medical record software vendor, was created in a Wisconsin basement by Judy Faulkner in 1979.  

In addition, Faulkner, a computer programmer, is still the company’s CEO and its sales were $3.3 billion in 2020.

However, Top medical institutes such as Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic use Epic to manage the medical records of over 250 million patients.  

Furthermore, the company has never taken outside funding or acquired, and all of its software is developed in-house.

In 2015, Faulkner signed the Giving Pledge, agreeing to donate 99 percent of her assets to a private nonprofit foundation. 

13. Meg Whitman: Estimated Net worth $6.2 Billion

Meg Whitman is primarily recognized for growing eBay’s sales from $5.7 million to $8 billion between 1998 and 2008.

Additionally, from 2011 to 2015, she was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, where she supervised the company’s split into H.P. Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.  

However, In February 2018, she stepped down as the CEO of HPE. She is a member of the Procter & Gamble and Dropbox boards of directors.

She is currently the CEO of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new short-form video platform, which will debut in April 2020. 

Whitman joined the board of directors of Immortals LLC, an e-sports startup based in Los Angeles, in 2018. 

14. Judy Love: Estimated Net worth $5 Billion

Judy Love is also one of the richest women in America. In 1964, she and her husband, Tom, used a $5,000 loan from Tom’s parents to open their first gas station in Watonga, Oklahoma.  

In addition, Judy was the bookkeeper and co-owner of the company with Tom until 1975, when she returned to school.

Furthermore, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores now has over 550 locations in 41 states, with an estimated revenue of $20 billion.  

Judy is the Chairman of the Love Family Fund and the executive secretary at Love’s. Her husband, Tom is the chairman of Love’s, and three of the couple’s four children work for the company. 

15. Marian Ilitch: Estimated Net worth $4.4 Billion

Marian Ilitch was born in January 1933 in Dearborn, Michigan. She and her late husband, Mike Illitch, cofounded Little Caesars Pizza and are best known for that.

She is also the Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers and the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings.  

The couple created Little Caesars Pizza in 1959, and they have since expanded into restaurants, sports, gaming, and entertainment.

Meanwhile, Marian Ilitch has received numerous honors and was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001.  

She was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2010 and named the nation’s top female company entrepreneur by Working Women Magazine. 

16. Johnelle Hunt: Estimated Net worth $4.3 Billion

Johnelle Hunt is a multibillionaire businesswoman from the United States. She was born in 1939 and made her fortune as a co-founder of America’s trucking behemoth J.B. Hunt Transport Services (JHBT).  

She founded the trucking business with her late husband, Johnnie Bryan Hunt, Sr., in 1969 after dropping out of the University of Arkansas.

Furthermore, with a 17 percent stake in the company, Hunt, who stepped down as corporate secretary in 2008, remains the firm’s largest individual stakeholder.  

She gave $5 million to the J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Family Ozark Highlands Center, which will open in December 2020 in Springdale, Arkansas. 

17. Thai Lee: Estimated Net worth $4.1 Billion

Thai Lee is also one of the richest women in America. She is the CEO of SHI International, an $11.1 billion (sales) I.T. company with 20,000+ customers, including Boeing and AT&T.

In addition, Lee was born in Bangkok and raised in South Korea before attending high school in the United States.  

Additionally, she worked at Procter & Gamble and American Express before joining SHI.

Typically, in 1989, Lee and her now-ex-husband bought the forerunner of SHI, a software reseller, for less than $1 million.  

Lee joined the board of Sonde Health, a subsidiary of PureTech Health that produces voice-based diagnostic technology, in 2018. 

18. Lynda Resnick: Estimated Net worth $4 Billion

Lynda Resnick is one of the richest women in America. Resnick is the marketing guru behind Wonderful Co., a food company worth roughly $5 billion in sales that she and her husband, Stewart, hold.  

Furthermore, Pom Wonderful, Mandarin Halos, Wonderful Pistachios, and Fiji Water are Wonderful Co.’s brands.

Again, they also own 135,000 acres of pistachio, almond, pomegranate, and mandarin orange farms in Texas, Mexico, and California.  

They met in the 1960s when she helped him market his burgeoning alarm company. They were both divorced at the time. 

19. Gail Miller: Estimated Net worth $3.2 Billion

Karen Gail Miller is a multibillionaire businesswoman who became CEO of Larry H. Miller after her husband, the founder of the LHM Group, died (Larry H. Miller).  

She is a native of the United States of America and the wealthiest person in Utah. Karen Gail Miller was born on October 14, 1943, in Utah.  

Larry H. Miller was her husband from 1965 until he died in 2009. Gail Miller is the CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, which he founded. 

20. Doris Fisher: Estimated Net worth $2.8 Billion

Doris Fisher was the company’s merchandiser until 2003 and remained on the Gap board of directors until 2009.

With a $15 million donation, the 1953 Stanford economics graduate co-founded the KIPP Foundation, supporting public charter schools.  

Additionally, Doris Fisher was the company’s merchandiser from its beginning until 2003 and remained on the Gap board of directors until 2009.  

With a $15 million donation, the 1953 Stanford economics graduate co-founded the KIPP Foundation, supporting public charter schools. 

21. Alice Schwartz: Estimated Net worth $3 Billion

Alice Schwartz is one of the richest women in America. In 1952, Alice Schwartz and her husband David founded Bio-Rad Laboratories in a Berkeley Quonset hut with $720 savings.  

Ion exchange resins, utilized in pharmaceutical manufacturing and lab research, were among the first products.

In addition, Bio-Rad now sells 10,000 life science research and clinical diagnostics products, bringing approximately $2.3 billion in revenue in 2019.  

Bio-Rad went public in 1966. In 1980, it was listed on the American Stock Exchange, and in 2008, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  

Schwartz, who was widowed in 2012, is still on the Bio-Rad board of directors and holds a 14% share; her son Norman is Chairman and CEO. 

22. Oprah Winfrey: Estimated Net worth $2.5 Billion 

Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest women in America. In addition, Oprah Winfrey’s famous talk show, which aired for 25 years, has evolved into a media and economic empire.  

According to “Forbes” estimations, the former news presenter grew the reinvested revenues from her talk show into a $2 billion fortune.  

OWN, Winfrey’s cable channel, debuted in 2011. Her 25.5 percent stake in the network is valued at around $65 million.

Furthermore, the ‘Oprah effect’ has migrated to Weight Watchers, where she owns a 10% share (now reduced to 7%) and is a brand ambassador.  

As part of her multi-year deal with the streaming service, she returned to the small screen in March 2020 for an interview show on COVID-19 on Apple TV+.