The heiress of the French cosmetics company L'Oréal, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, is the first woman with a fortune of more than 100 billion US dollars.
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Its value rose to $100.2 billion (CAD$135 billion) on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Index, while the company's shares hit a record high since 1998.
Despite this exorbitant sum, Ms. Bettencourt's fortune remains well below that of Bernard Arnault, the French founder of luxury conglomerate LVMH, who was in second place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of Wednesday evening with a value of $179 billion (CAD$236 billion). ).
Ms. Bettencourt, 70, is deputy chief executive of L'Oréal, a world-renowned company with sales of 241 billion euros (351 billion Canadian dollars).
As an only child, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers receives her fortune from her mother Liliane Bettencourt, who died in 2017.