The L’Oreal heiress, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers becomes the first woman to hit a $100 billion fortune. This marked another milestone for the heiress and for expanding fashion and cosmetics industries in France.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bettencourt Meyers’ wealth jumped to $100.1 billion on Thrusday. The moment came as the shares of L’Oréal SA, the beauty products empire rose to a record high to set the stocks for the year 2023, since 1998.
The world’s richest woman, Bettencourt Meyers, 70, is the vice-chair of the board of L’Oréal. L’Oréal is a globe-spanning €241 billion ($268 billion) company in which Bettencourt Meyers and her family are the single biggest shareholders with a stake of 35% nearly. Her sons, Jean-Victor Meyers and Nicolas Meyers, are also the directors of the company. Bettencourt Meyers’s grandfather, Eugène Schueller, is the founder of the L’Oréal Group. She inherited her mother, Liliane’s holdings after her death in 2017. She controls one-third of the world’s largest cosmetics maker, L’Oreal. L’Oreal owns the Lancome and Garnier brands, which had a revenue of 38.3 billion euros ($41.9 billion) in 2022.
The report says Bettencourt Meyers’ fortune to be less than Bernard Arnault, the French billionaire and CEO of luxury conglomerate LVMH, who ranked second with $179.4 billion as of Wednesday’s close.
Positively positioned for the future, L’Oreal’s stock is poised for continued growth, underpinned by its robust product portfolio and geographic strength.