The richest man in the world is the Frenchman Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and a fortune of 211.4 billion dollars, according to the Forbes magazine ranking. The Top 10 is completed by American billionaires and only up to 14th place does a countrywoman from Arnault appear, who is also the first woman in the ranking.
This is Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, heiress to the L’Oréal empire, who was also the first woman to amass a wealth of 100,000 million dollars, although with the movements of the stock market, as of February 2, 2024, it was 97,800 million. .
Liliane Bettencourt and her Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers in a fashion show in 2012 (photo by Pascal Le Segretain/WireImage)”. | Photo: WireImage
Liliane married the politician André Bettencourt and they only had one daughter, Francoise, who today, together with her family (she is married and has two children), owns around 33% of L’Oréal shares.
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers is the only child of the couple made up of Liliane (daughter of the creator of L’Oreal) and the politician André Bettencourt (photo by Antoine Gyori/Corbis via Getty Images). | Photo: Corbis via Getty Images
Since she was little she opposed the stereotype of a rich girl and perhaps her greatest act of rebellion was having married a Jew, taking into account that her grandfather Eugène Schueller donated money to pro-Nazi movements and was investigated for that after the end of the Second World War. Her father, André Bettencourt, also often made anti-Semitic speeches.
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe at the inauguration of the Hearing Institute – Pasteur Institute in February 2020 in Paris, France. (Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images for the Institut de l’Audition)” | Photo: Getty Images For Institut de l’A
While her parents lived in a mansion in one of the most exclusive areas of Paris, where celebrities and all kinds of powerful people visited, she lives in a two-story, relatively discreet apartment.
“I know I’m privileged, but, as you can see, I don’t live in a mansion. We are not big collectors of paintings and, as you can see, I don’t wear jewelry,” she said when she received Le M Magazine from the newspaper Le Monde at his house.
Intellectual and the Bettencourt affair
Instead of being a person from high society, Francoise chose a more intellectual and artistic profile, since she plays the piano and reads every day. However, her lifestyle was interrupted in 2007, when her father died and she decided to sue the photographer François-Marie Banier, a close friend of her mother for 20 years, who in her opinion was taking advantage of Liliane, to take away from her. the money.
Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers in a Giorgio Armani fashion show in 2012. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/WireImage) | Photo: WireImage
The legal process was scandalous and became known as the Bettencourt affair, in which not only the photographer’s abuse of Francoise’s mother was discussed, but problems of tax fraud were discovered, which ended up affecting President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was acquitted, but the process led to the resignation of his Labor Minister, Eric Woerth. After 10 years of trial, the photographer was sentenced to return 150 million euros and pay a fine, while it was established that Liliane suffered from dementia, leaving her under the legal guardianship of her daughter and her two grandchildren.