After reclaiming the title of world’s richest woman from French L'Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers on last year’s list, Walmart heiress Alice Walton widened her lead on Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires ranking in 2026. She saw her fortune soar by an estimated $33 billion over the past 12 months, to $134 billion, as the retail giant’s stock jumped by 30%.

Before being overtaken by Walton on the 2025 list, Bettencourt-Meyers, the granddaughter of L’Oreal founder Eugène Schueller (d. 1957), had been the world’s richest woman on Forbes’ annual ranking since 2020. She got richer over the past year, too (by an estimated $18.4 billion, and is now worth $100 billion, as shares of her family’s cosmetics conglomerate climbed by 13%)-–but that wasn’t enough to catch Walton.

The only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton (d. 1992), Alice, 76, rose one spot on the overall ranking, to become the 14th richest person on the planet, while Bettencourt-Meyers, 72, remained at No. 20. The two heiresses are the only women in the $100 Billion Club–those with fortunes spanning 12 digits–which now boasts a record 20 members, up from 15 last year. That includes Walton’s brothers Rob Walton, 81, and Jim Walton, 77, who rank just ahead of their sister on the list, worth an estimated $146 billion and $143 billion, respectively. The Walton family owns around 44% of Walmart’s stock.

Rob Walton succeeded his father as chairman and served in the role for more than two decades before handing the reins to his son-in-law Greg Penner in 2015 and retiring from Walmart’s board in 2024. Jim Walton still chairs the family’s Arvest Bank Group after being replaced as a director of Walmart by his son Steuart Walton in 2016. Alice, meanwhile, is best known for founding the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the Waltons’ hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. She chaired the museum for a decade before tapping Jim’s daughter-in-law Olivia Walton as her successor in 2021. Nearly all of the $1.6 billion it cost to open the facility in 2011 came from trusts in the names of Alice’s late brother John Walton (2005) and mother Helen Walton (d. 2007).

Alice has ramped up her own philanthropy over the past decade, pouring more than $6.3 billion into five family charitable foundations that have doled out an estimated $2 billion of her funds to date, making her America’s 26th most generous philanthropist. That includes more than $550 million that her Art Bridges Foundation has spent acquiring and loaning out works of American art to more than 300 museums across the country since its founding in 2016. It also includes an estimated $400 million gifted through the Walton Family Foundation to organizations focused on education reform, the environment and the region surrounding Bentonville.

And then there’s the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, which welcomed its first class of 48 four-year MD students to campus in July, after receiving $250 million of funding from Walton’s Art Bridges Foundation in 2023.

“I founded AWSOM with a vision for a new kind of medical school – one that focuses on the whole person by integrating physical, mental, emotional, and social health to promote well-being,” said Walton in a press release announcing the school’s opening. “That vision is now a reality.”

© Forbes