The world’s richest woman is gaining ground on Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, but given their respective fortunes, there is still a substantial gap between them.
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers made her fortune as the granddaughter of L’Oreal founder Eugène Schueller.
Meyers has amassed fortune by retaining her 33 percent ownership in the family firm, despite being born in line to inherit a portion of the immensely valuable beauty brand.
Her mother, Liliane, was the world’s previous richest woman until her death in 2017, and given their respective wealth, the title became hereditary.
Being an only child and inheriting her mother’s riches also helped, and her net worth continues to rise.
According to Forbes, her net worth has increased from a comfortable $80.5 billion (£64.2 billion) to $93.1 billion (£74.2 billion) on their current wealthy list.
The world’s richest woman is also ranked 14th on the worldwide rich list, and she continues to add to her fortune.
She is only seven spots behind Microsoft founder Bill Gates and is gaining momentum, having gained $751 million (£599 million) since their last update whereas he has only gained a meager $205 million (£163 million), thus she is gaining ground on him.
However, before she can start popping corks and rejoicing, she has a long way to go before she can even consider leapfrogging the likes of Bill Gates.
Despite her recent advances, the L’Oréal heiress is still about $24 billion (£19 billion) short of closing the gap behind Gates.
Of course, that would imply him not adding to his enormously massive wealth while she catches up, so even though she’s gaining pace now, it would be a hard order for her to overtake Bill Gates in the number seven spot.
According to Forbes, merely making the top ten list of the world’s wealthiest people would be a difficult task.
Michael Bloomberg’s net worth of $96.3 billion is $15.4 billion (£12.2 billion) less than Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s larger net worth of $111.7 billion (£89 billion).
While she is the world’s 14th richest person, she still has a long way to go before she can declare to the world that the age of Bill Gates is over.