Françoise Bettencourt Meyers French billionaire heiress and the richest woman in the world

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃swaz bɛtɑ̃kuʁ mɛjɛʁs]) is a French billionaire heiress and the richest woman in the world.^[1]

Raised to be a strict Catholic,^[2] she has written several Bible commentaries .^[3] She is the only daughter and heiress of Liliane Bettencourt. She married Jean-Pierre Meyers, the grandson of a rabbi murdered at Auschwitz, and they raised their children Jean-Victor and Nicolas as Jewish.^[3] Her marriage caused controversy because of her grandfather Eugène Schueller's trial for collaboration with the Nazi government; he was L'Oreal's founder.^[4] Bettencourt Meyers and her family still own a 33% stake in the company.^[5][1]

In 2008, she sued François-Marie Banier for taking money from her mother,^[4] and she started proceedings to have her mother declared mentally incompetent. The revelations in the secret recordings that she used in evidence led to the Woerth-Bettencourt scandal.

In December 2010, Bettencourt Meyers announced that she had settled out of court with both her mother and Banier.^[6]

Her mother died in September 2017 when her net worth was about $39.5 billion, which makes Bettencourt Meyers among the top 20 richest people in the world.

After a fire severely damaged Notre-Dame de Paris, Bettencourt Meyers and L'Oréal pledged $226 million to repair the cathedral.^[7]

As of June 2021, she was the richest woman in the world, with an estimated fortune of $92.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.^[8] As of July 2021, she sustained the title with a net worth US$86.0 billion according to Bloomberg.^[8]