Enough about Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, and the like. With nearly 12 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., American women have built 10-figure net worths that represent not an inheritance but the fruits of their labor. They include one billion-dollar businesswoman who just stepped down from Meta and has turned her attention to supporting the fight for abortion rights.
Note: Net worths are from Forbes’s real-time data and may change daily.
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Sheryl Sandberg
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Just two weeks after billionaire Sheryl Sandberg stepped down from Facebook parent Meta, the former chief operating officer donated $3 million to the ACLU Ruth Bader Ginsburg Liberty Center, which plans to use the funds to support candidates pursuing abortion rights. When Sandberg took over as Facebook’s COO in 2008, the company had just reported a $58 million single-year loss. By 2019, it was logging $18.5 billion in profits. Much of that turnaround can be traced to Sandberg’s vision of Facebook as a small-business advertising platform — a strategy that increased ad revenue by 27%. Now, she is looking to switch gears and make a difference. In an interview with the Associated Press, Sandberg said, “As I’m leaving Meta and looking at the next phase of my life and what I want to do and dedicate myself to, this is an issue that I think is absolutely fundamental to who we are as women, who we are as a society.”
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Sara Blakely
Net worth: $1.1 billion
The founder of Spanx has built an empire out of shapewear that has grown to include leggings, swimwear, and maternity wear and is sold in over 50 countries. Not bad for a former door-to-door fax machine salesperson who started down the path of shapewear after using pantyhose to create a smoothing undergarment to wear under white pants.
Weili Dai
Net worth: $1.3 billion
As cool as the name sounds, Marvell Technology doesn’t involve superheroes. The semiconductor company that Weili Dai and her husband founded in 1995, however, has made her very rich. Now based in Las Vegas, the couple has amassed an immense real estate and tech portfolio. They also have a built-in global network thanks to China-based family members who are also successful semiconductor entrepreneurs on the other side of the world.
Neerja Sethi
Net worth: $1 billion
Neerja Sethi founded Syntel in 1980 in Troy, Michigan, along with her husband Bharat Desai. In 2018, the couple sold the information-technology outsourcing and consulting firm to a French company for $3.4 billion. They started the business with just $2,000 and based it on Tata Consulting Services, one of the earliest IT consulting firms and the company where Neerja Sethi got her start.
Peggy Cherng
Net worth: $2.4 billion
If you’ve ever eaten at Panda Express, you’ve contributed to Peggy Cherng’s 10-figure net worth. The co-CEO of the 2,200-location mega-chain left her engineering career to help her husband found the Chinese fast-food company in 1982. The couple also has major stakes in other restaurant chains as well as the Waldorf-Astoria in Las Vegas.
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Safra Catz
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Safra Catz has been the CEO of Oracle since 2014, when she took over for founder Larry Ellison. She made her name shortly after joining the company in 1999 when she became the organizing force behind Oracle’s aggressive acquisition strategy. Oracle gobbled up more than 130 companies under her direction in those transformative years.
Eren Ozmen
Net worth: $2.5 billion
An immigrant from Turkey, Eren Ozmen is the majority owner and president of the Sierra Nevada Corp., a private defense and aerospace company that holds a half-dozen contracts with NASA for the International Space Station. She and her husband, a fellow Turkish immigrant, bought the company in 1994, when it had only 20 employees.
Jayshree Ullal
Net worth: $2 billion
Not only has Jayshree Ullal been the CEO of Arista Networks since 2008, but she owns 5% of the computer networking company’s stock. Born in India and raised in London, she is now one of America’s wealthiest corporate executives. She moved to Arista from Cisco, and Ullal’s current and former employers settled a $400 million legal battle last year.
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Elaine Wynn
Net worth: $1.7 billion
Known as the Queen of Las Vegas, Elaine Wynn co-founded Mirage Resorts and Later Wynn Resorts with her ex-husband, Steve Wynn. When the couple divorced, her power waned, but Elaine Wynn bided her time. After Steve Wynn was caught up in a whirlwind of sexual misconduct allegations, he stepped down as CEO of the Wynn empire — and Elaine Wynn made one of the great power moves in Vegas history. She waged war on the company’s board, leveraged her ex-husband’s vulnerable position, successfully muscled out longtime board members who were loyal to him, and by 2018, established herself as the largest individual shareholder of Wynn Resorts.
Gail Miller
Net worth: $4 billion
Along with her late husband Larry, Gail Miller built a $5.4 billion, 64-location automotive empire out of a single Toyota dealership. She remains the company’s chairperson and owner. The Millers bought the Utah Jazz for $22 million in 1986. In 2020, Gail Miller and her family sold the NBA franchise for $1.66 billion.
Alice Schwartz
Net worth: $2 billon
Alice Schwartz and her husband David had $750 in savings when they launched Bio-Rad Laboratories in 1952. It now does $2.3 billion in annual revenue on a line of 10,000 clinical diagnostic and life-science research products. She helped shepherd the company through its 1966 IPO, its initial 1980 listing on the American Stock Exchange, and its transition to the New York Stock Exchange in 2008. Alice Schwartz has been a widow since 2012 and her son is now CEO.
Oprah Winfrey
Net worth: $2.5 billion
In the world of billionaire self-made American women, one name rings out louder than all the rest: Oprah. The undisputed queen of daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey rose from suffocating childhood poverty and abuse in rural Mississippi during Jim Crow. She turned her TV show into a brand and her brand into a media empire. She started her own channel, OWN, has a major stake in Weight Watchers, secured a programming deal with Apple TV+, and remains not only one of the richest, but one of the most famous, most beloved, and most instantly recognizable women on the planet.
Doris Fisher
Net worth: $2.4 billion
After struggling to find jeans that fit her late husband Don, Doris Fisher co-founded the Gap. The couple opened their first store, which sold jeans and records, in 1969 in San Francisco. Doris Fisher worked as the company’s merchandiser from the very first day through 2003 and remained a member of the board through 2009.
Thai Lee
Net worth: $4.2 billion
AT&T and Boeing are just two of the 20,000-strong customer list serviced by IT provider SHI International. Born in Bangkok and raised in South Korea, Thai Lee immigrated to the United States for high school before earning an MBA at Harvard. She and her ex-husband bought the company that would become SHI for less than $1 million in 1989.
Lynda Resnick
Net worth: $5.3 billion
The Wonderful Co. is famous for its slick, edgy, and star-studded ad campaigns for its Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, mandarin Halos, and Wonderful Pistachios branded snacks and drinks. Those campaigns — and the $4.6 billion in sales the company does in a year — is largely thanks to the marketing genius of Lynda Resnick, who owns the company with her husband. The couple also own the 135,000 acres of orchards in Mexico, Texas, and California, where the company grows its fruits and nuts.
Marian Illitch
Net worth: $4.3 billion
Marian Illitch co-founded Little Caesars Pizza with her late husband Mike in 1959. Her husband owned the Detroit Tigers, which is controlled by a family trust, but Marian Illitch owns the Detroit Red Wings as well as the MotorCity Casino Hotel. Mrs. I, as she’s called, still owns Little Caesars, which does more than $4 billion in sales every year.
Johnelle Hunt
Net worth: $4.2 billion
Along with her late husband, Johnelle Hunt founded what would become J.B. Hunt Transport Services after selling their house and taking out loans to launch a rice hull packaging company in 1961. Headquartered in Lowell, Arkansas, her company now does $9.2 billion in sales. Johnelle Hunt remains the largest individual shareholder.
Judy Love
Net worth: $5.5 billion
With more than 520 locations in more than 40 states, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores is a fixture of the American highway. It all started in 1964 when Judy Love and her husband opened a gas station in Watonga, Oklahoma. The couple expanded, branched out, and ran their company together — Judy kept the books — until she returned to college in 1975. Their children now work for the company, which the couple still controls.
Meg Whitman
Net worth: $3 billion
Meg Whitman rose to fame when she grew eBay from a $5.7 million molehill in 1998 to an $8 billion mountain a decade later as the company’s CEO . Her second act was as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 2011-‘15, when she oversaw the company’s split. Whitman, who used her fortune to bankroll a failed political campaign, currently holds positions on the boards of General Motors and Procter & Gamble, and she is also the United States ambassador to Kenya.
Judy Faulkner
Net worth: $6.2 billion
Judy Faulkner is still the CEO of Epic, a $3.2 billion medical-records software provider that she founded in her basement in 1979. A computer programmer by trade, her company’s software supports the records of 250 million patients through partnerships with clients like the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. It has never raised venture capital, it has never made a single acquisition, and it continues to develop all its software in-house.
Diane Hendricks
Net worth: $11.6 billion
Diane Hendricks and her late husband, Ken, founded ABC Supply, which is now one of America’s largest wholesalers of windows, siding, and roofing products. She oversaw two mega-acquisitions and helped build the company to $11 billion in sales and 780 branch locations. Before she met her then-roofer husband, Hendricks sold custom homes for a builder.
Kim Kardashian
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Famous for being famous, Kim Kardashian makes headlines almost daily between her reality TV show “The Kardashians,” her dramatic relationship with ex-husband Kanye West, and her businesses, which are the primary source of her 10-figure fortune. Kardashian’s business empire includes a cosmetics and fragrance company called KKW Beauty, her shapewear business, Skims, and most recently, a skin care line.
Rihanna
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Originally from Barbados, a teenage Rihanna signed with Def Jam in 2005 and debuted her first single, “Pon de Replay,” which became the catalyst for her massive music career. Since then, the Grammy Award-winning singer has become colossal in music and business, with much of her fortune coming from her Fenty Beauty, her cosmetics company, and Savage X Fenty, her line of lingerie.
Jenny Just
Net worth: $1.5 billion
In 1997, after working as an options trader in Chicago, Jenny Just cofounded the options-trading firm Peak6 Capital Management and continued down the path of lucrative investing to secure her 10-figure net worth. Her biggest investment was in Apex Fintech Solutions.
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