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- The 31 richest women in Britain
The 31 richest women in Britain
31. Joanne Rowling — £600 million. From poverty as a single mother, J.K. Rowling has become one of the world's most financially successful authors. The royalties from the seven-book series on "Harry Potter" are thought to exceed £500 million. She donates millions to charity each year.
30. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw — £620 million. She founded biotech and pharmaceutical company Biocon that was sold to Unilever, then again to ICI. She and John Shaw — now her husband — chairs the business and Shaw sits on the board after he bought it back in 1998.
T=28. Inna Gudavadze — £650 million. Gudavadze inherited her wealth from her Georgian billionaire husband "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, who died in 2008. He gathered his wealth from commercial property, TV stations, gold mines, oil, and casinos.
T=28. Lady de Rothschild — £650 million. Lynn de Rothschild owns EL Rothschild, a family investment operation, with husband Evelyn de Rothschild and can thank him for most of her wealth.
27. May Makhzoumi — £700 million. The wife of Lebanese industrialist Fouad Makhzou gets most of her wealth from her husband. He founded Dubai-based company Future Pipe which makes fibreglass pipes for large infrastructure projects.
26. Patricia Thompson — £710 million. Thompson runs Newmarket's Cheveley Park Stud which is owned by her husband, a former Smithfield meat trader who made millions from selling the Hillsdown food group. She also runs food and retailing firms.
25. Ruth Parasol — £720 million. Gibraltar-based Parasol and her former husband Russ DeLeon derived their joint fortune through the launch of Starluck Casino and Partygaming. Partygaming is the parent company of PartyPoker.com.
24. Mireille Gillings — £722 million. She owns a £515m stake in Nasdaq-listed pharmaceuticals research company Quintiles with her husband Dennis, who founded the company in 1982. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Radboud University, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
23. Yelena Baturina — £729 million. Baturina is Russia's richest woman but she now living in London. The self-made oligarch started out in the computer software and hardware industries until funding her own plastics business Inteco in Russia.
22. Slavica Ecclestone — £740 million. The former Armani model was married to F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone for 24 years. However, considering her former husband is worth £2.7 billion ($3.9 billion), it comes as no surprise that her huge divorce settlement accounts for nearly all her wealth.
21. Princess Gesine Doria Pamphilj — £750 million. Princess Gesine and Prince Jonathan were adopted by an Italian noble family and in turn inherited a vast amount of wealth. Their inheritance includes an enormous art collection.
20. Nancy Shevell — £760 million. Shevell married legendary Beatles singer Paul McCartney in 2011 and her wealth has boomed since then. While she brought £150 million to the relationship, from her share of her father's US trucking operation, McCartney is the major source of her wealth.
19. Nichola Pease — £900 million. Fund manager Pease made £26 million when she sold her stake in JO Hambro Capital Management but a chunk of her fortune comes from her husband Crispin Odey, who is the controlling shareholder in hedge fund Odey Asset Management.
18. Ann Gloag — £1 billion. She is a shareholder in the transport company Stagecoach, which her and her brother Sir Brian Souter cofounded. The family stake is worth £408 million in total.
17. Varsha Engineer — £1.1 billion. Varsha and her husband Navin jointly run the Surrey-based pharmaceuticals group Chemidex, which is worth around £1 billion.
16. Christina Ong — £1.17 billion. Ong is known as "the Queen of Bond Street" because of the designer franchises she owns there through the Club 21 group.
15. Marit Mohn Westlake — £1.28 billion. Her wealth is one of Norway's leading industrial fortunes. Her family sold Framo, the maker of cargo pumps for tankers, to Sweden's Alfa Laval for £1.1 billion in 2014.
T=13. Emily von Opel — £1.4 billion. She is married to Georg who is the great-grandson of German car brand founder Adam Opel. Her wealth comes from her husband who owns Swiss-based holding company Hansa which has £1.4 billion of assets.
T=13. Mary Haughey, Lady Ballyedmond — £1.4 billion. Lady Mary mainly derived her wealth from late husband Lord Ballyedmond, who died in a helicopter crash in 2014. She is now the deputy chairman of the family's Norbrook Laboratories, which is worth £1 billion ($1.44 billion). Despite being the richest person in Northern Ireland, photos of her are hard to come by.
12. Anita Zabludowicz — £1.5 billion. Anita's husband Poju Zabludowicz is a world famous art collector with his 3,000-strong Zabludowicz Collection in London. His wealth comes through property and hotels. Only four years ago, he sold the family's British Israel Property operation for £484 million ($700 million).
11. Dame Mary Perkins — £1.55 billion. Perkins and her husband Douglas met at Cardiff University and founded the opticians chain Specsavers.
10. Princess Marie-Chantal and family — £1.58 billion. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal is rich because her father Robert Miller made his fortune through cofounding the Hong Kong-based Duty Free Shoppers chain in 1960. She then married Pavlos, the son of former King Constantine II of Greece, who was deposed in 1973.
9. Harriet Heyman — £1.95 billion. Heyman can largely thank her husband Michael Moritz for her wealth. He's the chairman of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and was an early investor in Google, PayPal and Yahoo.
8. Salma Hayek — £2.35 billion. She's a successful Hollywood actress in her own right, with a personal net worth of £64 million, and earns £12 million a year in film work alone. However, her total wealth is largely down to her marriage to London-based François-Henri Pinault, who is the CEO of the second-largest French luxury group Kering, which was founded by his father.
7. Lady Tina Green — £3.22 billion. Lady Tina is married to high street fashion magnate Philip Green. The Green family has stakes in Arcadia, which includes major British brands like Topshop. Tina's husband also owns £1.6 billion worth of property, yachts, and past dividends.
6. Carrie Perrodo — £3.35 billion. Carrie is the widow of the late Hubert Perrodo, who founded the Franco-British oil company Perenco. When he died in an Alpine climbing accident in 2006, Carrie and her eldest son, Francois, took control of the company.
5. Baroness Howard de Walden — £3.63 billion. The eldest of four daughters of the late Lord Howard de Walden leads the family's property empire, which grew by £400 million in 2014 to 2015.
4. Denise Coates — £3.765 billion. She is Britain's richest self-made woman thanks to turning her small betting shop into the world's largest online gambling company — Bet365.
3. Kirsten Rausing — £8.7 billion. She is a leading shareholder in Swiss-based packaging behemoth Tetra Laval. She is one of the three children of the late Gad Rausing, pictured here in the middle in an undated photo.
2. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken — £9.15 billion. She inherited 25% of the drinks Heineken and at one point said she "I lived off [my husband's] salary and his bonus in his house." Her husband Michel remains as a director in Heineken.
1. Kirsty Bertarelli — £9.78 billion. Bertarelli, a singer, married the richest man in Switzerland. Her wealth is more than the Queen and "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling combined. Her husband Ernesto inherited biotech giant Serono from his father and then sold it in 2007 for £6.2 billion.
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