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.

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