Trinity University alum and Walmart heiress Alice Walton has earned the title of world's wealthiest woman. According toForbes, Walton has toppled L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France to become the richest woman on the planet for the first time since 2022.
Walton’s estimated fortune is now $89.1 billion and Meyers’ is $88.4 billion, Forbes reported on September 5.
The two billionaires have battled for richest-woman supremacy for years. Meyers knocked Walton off her perch in 2019, then Walton climbed back on top in 2020. Also in the mix has been American Julia Koch of Koch Industries, who booted Walton down to No. 3 in 2023.
But with Walmart stock up 47 percent and L’Oreal's down 13 percent, Forbes says, Walton wins in 2024.
According to Forbes’real-time tracker on September 11, Walton is the 18th richest person in the world, a few places behind her brothers Rob and Jim Walton.
Alice Walton, 74, is the only daughter of late Walmart founder Sam Walton.
She earned a bachelor of arts in economics and finance from Trinity University in San Antonio in 1971, and has called Texas home for many years. She has owned homes and ranches in the Fort Worth area and sits on the board of Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
Alice Walton (second from left) with Olivia Walton, Annie Leibovitz, and Awol Erizku at a 2023 event at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
Unlike other family members, Walton has never been involved in the day-to-day operations of Walmart; her fortune comes largely from her stake in the company.
"Despite selling more than $22 billion of Walmart stock over the past decade — and giving away more than $11 billion of the retailer’s shares — Sam Walton’s heirs still own nearly 46 percent of the firm their father founded, due to significant stock buybacks that have prevented the family’s stake from being diluted," Forbes says, estimating that three-quarters of the family's stock is split evenly between Alice Walton and her siblings Jim and Rob.
Walmart is the world's largest retailer, employing more than 2 million associates worldwide. The average hourly pay for a Walmart employee in Texas is $22.37 an hour, according to ZipRecruiter's most recent estimates. In recent years, the company has increased hourly rates for frontline workers and lobbied Congress for higher minimum wages, they say.
Alice Walton, a passionate lifelong art collector, devotes most of her time and energy now to her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (from which she retired as chairman in 2021) and to the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine - both in her native Bentonville, Arkansas.
“Alice Walton has ramped up her personal philanthropy over the last decade, pouring more than $5.7 billion into five family charitable foundations that have doled out more than $1.1 billion of her funds to date,” Forbes says, “including more than $377 million her Art Bridges Foundation has spent acquiring and loaning out works of American art to more than 230 museums across the country since its founding in 2016.”
Walton is not, however, the richest person in Texas. For the last few years, she's duked it out with Elon Musk for the top spot in the Lone Star State. The Austin-based founder of Tesla and Space-X and owner of social media platform X continues his reign as the wealthiest Texan in 2024 (and in the world, as of September 11).
