With 14 Grammys, a No. 1 spot on Billboard’s 100 Artist chart and a record-breaking music tour, Taylor Swift is now one of the richest women in the world.
The pop singer (worth $1.1 billion) was named a notable newcomer in Forbes’ richest women in the world list thanks to her ongoing Eras Tour, which earned more than $1 billion in 2023. The tour, which started last March and earned Swift an estimated $190 million after tax, made her the first musician to become a billionaire based solely on “performances, recordings and a lucrative half-billion dollar music catalog,” according to Forbes.
Aside from Swift — who Forbes named a billionaire last year — other music artists that have reached billionaire status include Rihanna, whose worth was an estimated $1.7 billion in 2021. Oprah Winfrey is the richest female entertainer and the richest celebrity woman in the U.S., with a worth of $2.5 billion.
This year, women make up 13.3% of people named on Forbes’ list of worldwide billionaires, an increase from 12.8% in 2023. Despite the increase, women only make up a small fraction of Forbes’ world billionaires list.
Yet, women are richer now than they’ve ever been before, Forbes says.
Nine out of the top 10 richest women in the world on Forbes’ list inherited their fortunes from their families. Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who is the granddaughter of L’Oréal founder Eugène Schueller and is worth $99.5 billion, took the No. 1 spot for the richest woman in the world for the fourth year in a row. Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the richest woman in the U.S., with a worth of $15.6 billion.
Another woman on Forbes’ richest women list is Abigail Johnson, who took over Fidelity Investments CEO from her father Edward “Ned” Johnson III in 2014. Under her leadership, the financial services corporation hit a record of $28.2 billion in revenue last year.
Sixty-six percent of billionaires worldwide are currently self-made, which has slightly declined from 69% last year, according to Forbes. Out of the 369 billionaire women on this year’s list, 100 are self-made by either founding or co-founding a company, or by solely building their fortune. As co-founder of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, Forbes named Rafaela Aponte-Diamant (worth $33.1 billion) as the richest self-made woman.
Yet, what’s perhaps most impressive about Forbes’ list is that the women on them have a combined worth of nearly $1.8 trillion, an approximate $240 billion increase from last year. To give you an idea, a stack of $1 trillion in single dollar bills can stretch around more than two times around our planet’s equator, according to CNBC.
It’s safe to assume that these women know their worth — and it’s huge, literally.
