Billionaire Woman case study: Liliane Bettencourt

Liliane%20Bettencourt

Name: Liliane Bettencourt

Age: 86, born October 21, 1922

Citizen of: France, living in Paris, France

Marital Status: Widowed, with 1 child

Source of Wealth: Inherited from her father Eugene Schueller, the founder of L’Oreal cosmetics company.

What makes her special: She is the richest woman in France, and one of the richest people in the world. In 2007, Forbes estimated her net wealth to be $20.7 billion.

Rank on BillionaireWoman.com: #1st of many billionaire women to be studied.

Liliane Bettencourt’s Past
Liliane Bettencourt’s past was kept quite private, but I was able to uncover some interesting articles about her husband, Andre Bettencourt who passed away in 2007. According to the Telegraph, Andre Bettencourt’s past associations with anti-semitic groups have been resurfacing since his death. He seems to have been intertwined with the L’Oreal fortune since his youth, where he was part of the group La Cagoule, which was bankrolled by Eugene Schueller, Liliane’s father. He then went on to marry Liliane in 1950, making him one of the richest men in France. He and Liliane had a daughter together, who is now a member of the board of directors for the L’Oreal company.

Liliane inherited her father’s wealth after his death in 1957. She is the principal shareholder of the L’Oreal company, with 27.5% of shares. Although her husband and father seem to have had checkered pasts, no such thing can be said of Liliane. In fact, to the contrary, Liliane created the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, which awards a prize to European researchers under the age of forty-five - the “Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences.” This is another great example of how women can turn wealth into positive outcomes for others in their community.

What the future holds

Liliane Bettencourt’s life has always been kept under wraps. But what seems interesting to me is the fact that L’Oreal is now a global company, that still trades out of Paris only. In fact Liliane has been resisting any changes to the way that the company is being managed. However some spokespeople close to the company are saying that changes are inevitable. Personally, I am quite interested in knowing what Liliane’s daughter would think about a change to the company’s holding structure, since that would impact her inheritance as well. Only time will tell.

What we can learn from her

Liliane Bettencourt inherited a large sum of money, and learned to harness it and make it work for her and her fellow Europeans. An article in The Guardian describes her as one of the great stereotypical female leaders of the matriarch type. The article goes on to describe how Liliane may have inherited her wealth, but so have countless women throughout the ages, and this fact has generally created strong and decisive women leaders. Therefore I think it is important to remember that even though women like Liliane were not “self made billionaires” overnight, they did need to cultivate their own financial prowess to survive in a tough high stakes world.

So just as women who were born into royal families had to learn the skills of negotiation, political savvy, and street smarts, so do women who inherit large sums of money. I think that as women who have not inherited billions, we can learn to be more like Liliane by honing our matriarchal skills and helping others around us. We can teach those of us who are younger and encourage others to reach for their full potentials, while still keeping control of our own power and respectability. I do believe that this is something every woman needs to work on, since it is obviously not an easy task.

**Please Note that any comments left here will NOT be read by Liliane Bettencourt herself. This website is in no way affiliated with her!**

Comments

nitin ramsurrun

hi everybody.i want to get in contact with the richest women in the world to make them expand their money more and more

Albert Jeaan Louis

BETHEL EVANGELICAL BAPTIST CHURCH OF JACKSONVILLE, Inc
422 Luray street
Jacksonville, FL 32254
1/20/2009

TO: Mayor peyton
Dear Mayor and Staff
Greetings to you in the wonderful name of Lord Jesus Christ!
I am grateful to the Lord for the privilege of writing this letter to you although we may not know each other physically, but we are connected spiritually by the love of God.
I appeal to you to receive this letter from a servant of the Lord in good faith. The reason it is addressed to you it is the fact that the Bible says to all of us who are Christians, we are all one in Jesus Christ. “( Galatians 3:28 ) By the grace of God, we are blessed to asked our brothers in Christ to help in contributing to building up His kingdom.
Therefore we come to you for help regards to our church emergency building fund project. Our request is for you to consider in providing us with a financial gift that your heart desires. May your contribution be for the glory of God and may God bless you. For the Bible says that God love a Cheerful giver. ( II Corinthians 9:7)
At last I thank you for your time and the same presence of the Lord. WE ask that you pray for our congregation and our building fund project because we are in need, God bless us with a church building about two years ago and we have to give back 70 000 dollars that we took from another church when we make the purchase of this facility. Then we have different types of ministries like kids ministry, youth ministry and adult education, we have so much works to get than like remodeling and parking lot etc. but our biggest problem now is the parking lot because we are located in a flood zone , so we are in need for

that, on our worship service we always have dirty carpet specially when it rain we always have muddy parking lot. we are in need and waiting for help. That is why we come to you to see how you can help us in this situation. We come to you specially because I know that you like development. So if you want to visit our Church we will be more than happy to receive you. That is will be for the glory of God. So we have different types of project for about $1.5 million but now the most important for us is the parking lot. we want to let you know that your support will be good for our ministry. See us at: (www.bethelebc.org)904-298-4697

Please send your Donation to:
Bethel Evangelical Baptist Church of Jacksonville:
P.O.BOX 8162.
Jacksonville FL 32239

May God bless you, keep you and shine His light on you!
May His grace and peace be upon you in Jesus name!
Thank you for your help

Rev. Albert Jean Louis

SYED NAWAZ ALI

Hello Liliane Bettencourt

I m SYED NAWAZ FROM PAKISTAN and i want to ask for u such a real help ...plz help me that i have been broke and i m student and i want to study more.but in pakistan there is no chance to study more.that i have no MONEY for my studies..plz give me some money then i continue my studies more..i have also applied for UK university for i did not get visa..plzplzplzplzplzplz Help me

i m not a fake ...

PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ MY BROTHER u must help me.and want to study more and more...u can send me some money in my account

M.C.Bank Share-e-faisal karachi pakistan
Branch Code is 0042
Account number is 0114158781003110
KARACHI.PAKISTAN

My email is nawaz_friendly@yahoo.com ..
if u read this mail by god bounty..plz do for me

Call me +923222903004

SYED NAWAZ ALI