With a net worth of $29.8 billion Walmart heir Alice Walton has topped the list of female billionaires with her sister-in-law, Christy, taking third place.
Alice Walton, 62, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, managed to topple Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart off the top spot thanks to Walmart stock trading at a 12 year high.
Christy Walton, 57, who inherited her husband John’s stake in Wal-Mart after he died in a plane crash in 2005, has a worth valued at $28.2 billion, according to the Wealth X list.
In 2007 the Walmart family’s worth was the same amount as the bottom 30 per cent of Americans, according to economist Sylvia Allegretto from the University of California-Berkeley.
When she was about ten years old Alice Walton invested in her first piece of art and this interest led to her spearheading the Walton Family Foundation’s involvement in developing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
She has spent over $300million building an American art museum in Arkansas with the facilities alone costing more than $100million. She was briefly married when she was in her twenties.
