The Richest Woman in the World, L’Oreal Heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers

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whose US$93 billion net worth is helping to restore the Notre-Dame cathedral

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd might be the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, but Françoise tops Forbes’ 2021 list of the top richest women. The granddaughter of the beauty brand’s founder, Eugène Schueller, Françoise and her family donated millions to help restore Notre-Dame in Paris
Here’s what you might not know about the 68-year-old …

Françoise is the granddaughter of L’Oreal founder Eugène Schueller, who formulated a hair dye solution in 1907 that he called Oréale, sold to Parisian hairdressers and later registered as a company – the future L’Oreal.

In 1957, Schueller’s daughter (and Françoise’s mother) Liliane Bettencourt inherited Schueller’s fortune. Together with her husband, French politician André Bettencourt, the power couple soon achieved socialite status in France. Following Liliane’s passing in September 2017, Françoise became the world’s richest woman – a title she has maintained ever since.

She had a rocky relationship with her mum

“I don’t see my daughter any more and I don’t wish to. For me, my daughter has become something inert.” These were the words of Liliane in an interview in 2008, as reported by Vanity Fair.
The mother-daughter relationship soured after 2007, when Françoise launched a lawsuit against her mother’s close friend and celebrity photographer François-Marie Banier, whom she accused of attempting to take a share of the family’s fortune. The case later became known as the Bettencourt Affair and would last until 2015. Banier was ultimately convicted for capitalising on Liliane’s struggle with dementia to gain family assets.

She’s a published author

Despite owning a 33 per cent stake in L’Oreal, Françoise channels her time into something quite different from the cosmetics industry: authoring books. An academic who was raised Catholic, the heiress has penned books on everything from Greek mythology to the Bible. Back in 1987, she even established the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation alongside her mother to support research in the sciences, arts and humanitarian causes.

She shuns the spotlight Her parents famously hosted glitzy functions, but Françoise seems to enjoy quite the opposite. Even in her adolescent years, she preferred playing the piano or indulging in books.

She is helping to restore the Notre-Dame cathedral A fire in April 2019 left Paris’ famed medieval cathedral a scorched shell of its former self. To help in its restoration, L’Oreal and the Bettencourt Meyers family donated US$226 million.