The headlines are often shouting out which celebrity is the richest man in the world, but not so much attention is paid to who the richest woman might be.
The usual suspects for the top spot are usually reserved for the Queen of England, talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey or Liliane Bettencourt, the L’Oreal heiress.
But, according to one respected business magazine, the richest woman in the world is Australian Gina Rinehart.
Gina who? You might well ask, because Gina has, until recently, kept a low profile, but her fortune is based in mining.
Indeed, she is so focussed on the business that has made her family incredibly wealthy that when she was asked what her concept of beauty was, her answer became famous.
She replied, ‘Beauty is in an iron mine.’
Her father, Lang Hancock, created the fortune after discovering one of the world’s biggest reserves of iron ore in the early 1950s. At the time, iron ore was so rare, export was banned by the Australian government.
And now, decades later, the Pilbara mining fields in Western Australia continue to produce iron ore and the family fortune has swelled into billions of dollars.
But as the money poured into the family and help boost Australia’s wealth, some feel a rising sense of injustice that the efforts of mining generally, and the work of Gina’s family particularly, are not fully recognised by the country.
Gina, born Georgina in 1954, is now worth around £28 billion. To put this into perspective, Gina Rinehart makes around £393 every second of every minute of every day. That’s an incredible £23,580 an hour.
She studied in Sydney and later married lawyer Frank Rinehart in 198, though she is now a widow with four children.
When her father died in 1992, Gina became the company’s chief executive.
World’s wealthiest women
When she assumed the top post, Gina is credited with turning the business around and now resents being called an heiress when she considers herself to be a self-made businesswoman.
One of her driving influences is the belief that her family’s contribution to the country’s prosperity has never been properly recognised by neither the east coast elites nor the media.
However, it’s not all bad news and in the near future many people will get to hear of Gina Rinehart.
Her place as the world’s richest woman was announced by BRW, an Australian business magazine, and now banker Citigroup is predicting that the 58-year-old will top the global rich list with assets of around £65 billion.
In contrast, the Queen has a personal fortune estimated at £500 million, although the Crown Estate, owned by the country, is conservatively estimated to be worth £10 billion.
Forbes magazine reckons Oprah is worth around £1.7 billion, while Liliane Bettencourt ‘s fortune tots up to £24 billion.
