2023-12-01 01:43:17
Friday, December 1, 2023, 00:43
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Poor rich girl. The title of that Mexican soap opera from the 90s would serve to describe, even if with an excessively thick stroke, the life of the richest woman in the world (the eleventh including men on the list).
She is Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, a 70-year-old French heiress and owner of a third of L’Oreal, the cosmetics empire that has earned her an estimated fortune of about $86.5 billion (€94.5 billion). And not a few headaches.
Because this heritage is the result of a stormy intra-family relationship, that of François with his mother Liliane, and that also scales a generation further, to that of his maternal grandfather Eugène Schueller, founder of the brand.
A series recently released by Netflix – ‘The Bettencourt case: the scandal of the richest woman in the world’ – delves into this soap opera of rich people. The trigger for all the family disagreements – or at least, the most notorious – was Françoise’s legal complaint against her mother.
It was 2007, Liliane was then 87 years old and had a compulsive tendency to distribute part of her gigantic assets (cash, real estate, works of art, life insurance policies, etc.) among several friends. One of them was the photographer François-Marie Banier who for years received nothing less than ‘gifts’ worth about $1.13 billion from Liliane.
Françoise litigated in court to disqualify her mother, who would have been a prisoner of a sect allegedly led by Banier, for being “mentally incompetent.” This, according to Françoise, intended to embed himself in the family nucleus to collect part of Liliane’s inheritance.
Everything broke there. Her mother accused her daughter of being “une emmerdeuse” (a pest, a headache). At Banier’s trial, Liliane’s lawyer said on her behalf that Françoise was “a 57-year-old girl who complains that her mother does not love her, that she loves him more (because of the photographer). They never spoke again.
The scandal also affected former French Employment Minister Eric Woerth, to whom Liliane allegedly made an illegal donation to Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007.
Finally Banier was sentenced to three years in prison and Woerth was acquitted. In 2011, Françoise managed to get a judge to appoint her as legal guardian of her mother – who apparently had an advanced state of Alzheimer’s – and she took over her business and family throne.
Grandpa’s Nazi past
A L’Oreal shareholder since 1997, he owns 33% of the group’s shares and also directs the Bettencourt Schueller foundation, patron of scientific and artistic projects. In 2019 he donated 226 million euros to help with the restoration of Notre Dame after the fire that partially destroyed the cathedral.
Her wedding to Jean-Pierre Meyers, grandson of a rabbi murdered in Auschwitz, was one of the first sparks that lit the fire in the Bettencourt family: patriarch Eugène had been accused of collaborating with the Nazi regime during the invasion of France.
At that time, the until then very Catholic Françoise converted to Judaism, the religion under which the couple’s two children, Jean-Víctor and Nicolas, were raised.
Despite her status as the richest woman on the planet, Bettencourt Meyers’ life – at least from the outside – is marked by austerity and seclusion. She frequently presents – the few times she is seen in public – a rather disheveled appearance.
He dedicates many leisure hours to playing the piano and reading compulsively. She is also the author of books on biblical studies and Greek gods, and on the relationship between the Christian and Jewish faiths.
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