On 23 June, the United Nations marks International Widows’ Day – a date established in 2011 to draw attention to the millions of women left economically vulnerable after a spouse’s death. The reality, however, is far more complicated. For some widows, bereavement does not mean destitution. It means inheriting a 42 per cent stake in one of America’s largest private companies, or a copper mining empire spanning Chile’s Atacama Desert, or a casino conglomerate stretching from Macao to Singapore. These are not stories of passive inheritance. They are stories of women who stepped into boardrooms, restructured multibillion-dollar holdings, and in several cases, multiplied the fortunes they received.
Here are the ten wealthiest widows alive today – and what they did with the empires left behind.
Julia Koch – $78 billion
When David Koch died in August 2019 at age 79, his wife Julia inherited a 42 per cent stake in Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States, with annual revenues exceeding $125 billion. The Iowa-born former fashion assistant had met David on a blind date in January 1991; they reconnected later that year, married in 1996, and had three children.
As of April 2026, Bloomberg estimates Julia Koch’s net worth at $78 billion, making her the wealthiest widow on the planet. She sits on the board of Koch Industries but maintains a characteristically low public profile. What she has done quietly, however, is invest aggressively in sport: in 2024 she acquired a 15 per cent stake in the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and Barclays Center for $688 million, and in October 2025 she bought a 10 per cent stake in the New York Giants for $1.03 billion. The Koch fortune is not shrinking. It is diversifying.
Iris Fontbona – $52.6 billion
Iris Fontbona is the richest woman in Latin America and, by some measures, the biggest single-year gainer among all women on the Forbes list. In 2026, her net worth surged by $24.5 billion to reach $52.6 billion, driven by record copper prices and the performance of Antofagasta PLC, one of the world’s largest copper producers, which her family controls with a roughly 65 per cent stake.
The Chilean widow inherited her mining empire from her husband Andrónico Luksic, a businessman of Croatian descent who died of cancer in 2005. Luksic had built his fortune from a single mistake: in 1954, the Japanese firm Nippon Mines paid him $500,000 instead of 500,000 pesos for a copper interest – roughly six times his asking price. He used the windfall to expand into shipping, banking, beer, and manufacturing. After his death, Fontbona and her children maintained united ownership of the family’s holdings, including Banco de Chile and the brewer CCU. At 83, she remains the matriarch who quietly controls it all.
Miriam Adelson – $43.8 billion
Miriam Adelson (née Farbshlein) was born in Tel Aviv, studied microbiology and genetics at Hebrew University, and earned a medical degree from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Medical School. She served as a medical research officer in the Israeli army before being sent to New York in 1986 to study addiction treatment at Rockefeller University. Two years later, a friend set her up on a blind date with Boston-born entrepreneur Sheldon Adelson. They married in Jerusalem in 1991.
When Sheldon died in January 2021 at age 87, Miriam inherited the family’s controlling stake in Las Vegas Sands, which operates six integrated resorts in Asia. In 2022, the company sold its Las Vegas properties – the Venetian Resort and the Sands Expo – to Apollo Global and Vici Properties for $6.25 billion. She also became majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. At 79, Adelson remains one of the most significant political donors in the United States, having continued the couple’s pattern of large-scale Republican funding after Sheldon’s death.
Savitri Jindal – $37.4 billion
Savitri Jindal was a housewife who, by her own admission, never asked her husband how much money he made – until he died. Om Prakash Jindal, the founder of the O.P. Jindal Group, a conglomerate spanning steel, power, mining, and cement, was killed in a helicopter crash in northern India in 2005. His widow, then 55, took over as chairperson of the group.
The decision was extraordinary. Jindal had married Om Prakash in the 1970s, after his first wife – Savitri’s own sister – died. She became stepmother to his six children from the first marriage, and the couple had three more. After her husband’s death, the group’s companies were divided among four sons, each running their own division, but Savitri retained the role of matriarch and controlled her late husband’s stake. She also entered politics, serving in the Haryana Legislative Assembly. Today, at 75, she is the richest woman in India, with a net worth of $37.4 billion according to Forbes.
Marilyn Simons – $31 billion
Marilyn Hawrys Simons grew up in a family of bricklayers. Her father, uncles, brother, and cousin all laid bricks – some of the original structures of Stony Brook University on Long Island. She went on to earn a PhD in economics from that same university, where she met Jim Simons, the mathematician and hedge fund pioneer who founded Renaissance Technologies.
The couple created the Simons Foundation in 1994, and Marilyn served as its founding president for 27 years. When Jim died in May 2024 at age 86, she inherited the bulk of his fortune and assumed the role of chair of the foundation’s board of trustees. The Simons Foundation, with assets of $4.5 billion, is the primary funder of Math for America and a major supporter of basic science research. At 74, Simons chairs Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s board and sits on multiple educational boards. Forbes gives her a self-made score of one – the lowest possible – but the foundation’s giving tells a different story of intentional, strategic philanthropy.
Elaine Marshall – $30.9 billion
Elaine Marshall’s connection to Koch Industries traces back to 1959, when Fred C. Koch acquired a 35 per cent stake in Great Northern Oil Company, co-founded by her father-in-law J. Howard Marshall II. In 1974, Howard Marshall gave each of his two sons four per cent of Koch Industries voting stock. When the elder Marshall died in 1995 at age 90, those shares passed to his youngest son, E. Pierce Marshall – Elaine’s husband.
Pierce died in 2006, and Elaine inherited the family’s approximately 16 per cent stake in Koch Industries. She became a director of the company and has served on its board ever since. The Marshall family’s shares played a pivotal role in the failed 1980 boardroom coup against Charles Koch, and the family’s holdings remain central to the company’s ownership structure. Marshall also found herself entangled in one of America’s most famous legal battles: the Anna Nicole Smith inheritance dispute, which reached the US Supreme Court before being resolved in her favour. At 83, she controls a fortune of $30.9 billion.
Diana Hendricks – $21.9 billion
Diane Hendricks’s path to billionaire status began with hardship. At 17, she became pregnant, married, divorced, and was left destitute. To support her child, she worked as a waitress in a nightclub before moving into real estate sales. It was during that period that she met Ken Hendricks, a roofing contractor. They married in 1975 and began investing in properties together.
In 1982, the couple secured a loan to establish ABC Supply, which has grown into the largest wholesale distributor of roofing, siding, and windows in the United States. When Ken died in 2007 after a fall, Diane took over as chair and has led the company ever since. Forbes awards her a self-made score of nine out of ten, and her fortune has tripled in the past five years to $21.9 billion. She has beaten cancer twice, survived her husband’s death, and at 78 still runs the company and its parent, Hendricks Holding Co.
Renata Kellnerová – $19.7 billion
In March 2021, Renáta Kellnerová’s husband Petr Kellner, the richest person in the Czech Republic, died in a helicopter crash in Alaska at age 56. He had co-founded PPF Group in 1991, in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, building it into one of the largest investment groups in Europe with assets of approximately €41.7 billion.
After his death, Kellnerová became beneficiary owner of Kellner’s 98.93 per cent stake in PPF Group. She has since overseen the company’s operations across financial services, telecommunications, and real estate, including stakes in InPost, O2 Czech Republic, and the parcel locker company CETIN. She and Petr had co-founded the Educa Foundation in 2002 and the Kellner Family Foundation in 2011, which distributed CZK 1.6 billion in educational grants. At 58, she is the wealthiest woman in the Czech Republic.
Laurene Powell Jobs – $11.9 billion
Laurene Powell Jobs met Steve Jobs in 1989 while she was pursuing an MBA at Stanford. He was giving a guest lecture; he asked her out in the parking lot. They married in 1991 in Yosemite National Park and had three children. When Steve Jobs died in October 2011, Powell Jobs inherited the Steven P. Jobs Trust, which held significant stakes in both Disney and Apple.
Rather than simply managing the portfolio, she founded Emerson Collective, an impact investment and philanthropic organisation focused on education, immigration, climate, and social justice. Through Emerson, she acquired a majority stake in The Atlantic and invested in Axios, ProPublica, and The Athletic. She has pledged $3.5 billion over ten years to address climate change and has publicly stated that her children will not inherit the fortune – she prefers to spend it on social and philanthropic projects. At 62, she remains one of the most influential figures in American philanthropy.
Friede Springer – $5.5 billion
Friede Springer’s story reads like a screenplay. In 1965, at age 23, she took a job as a nanny to the two sons of German publisher Axel Springer, founder of Europe’s largest media conglomerate and the man behind Bild. Despite a thirty-year age gap, they began a relationship, and in 1978 she became his fifth wife. Seven years later, in 1985, Axel Springer died of a heart attack.
Friede inherited a controlling interest in Axel Springer SE, which publishes more than 150 newspapers and magazines. She has served as vice chairwoman of the supervisory board since 1985 and remains the largest shareholder, holding 22.5 per cent of the company. In 2020, she gifted a 15 per cent stake to CEO Mathias Döpfner and sold him an additional 4.1 per cent, ensuring the company’s leadership continuity. She chairs two foundations – the Axel Springer Foundation and the Friede Springer Foundation – which fund scientific, medical, and cultural projects. At 83, she is still actively shaping one of Europe’s most important media companies.
The Wealth Behind the Mourning
What unites these ten women is not simply the scale of their wealth but the nature of their transitions. Several were not businesspeople before their husbands’ deaths. Savitri Jindal was a housewife. Friede Springer was a nanny. Marilyn Simons came from a family of bricklayers. Yet each assumed control of vast economic machinery and, in most cases, expanded it.
The pattern is clear: inheritance is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a new one. These widows did not merely receive fortunes. They inherited boardrooms, restructured conglomerates, redirected capital, and in several cases, fundamentally altered the trajectory of the companies they were handed. In a world where only 13 per cent of billionaires are women, these ten remind us that sometimes the fastest route to extraordinary wealth is not building an empire from scratch – it is stepping into one when it is left behind.
