Into The List: America's Richest Self-Made Women 2025 I Forbes

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5 • 4 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

Senior Editor Maggie McGrath sits with Assistant Managing Editor Kerry A. Dolan to discuss the 10th anniversary of America's Richest Self-Made Women List.

Bigger fortunes. More billionaires. Increasing impact. Forbes marks the 10th anniversary of our annual list by celebrating how far these 100 entrepreneurs, executives and entertainers have come. Together these ceiling breakers are worth a combined $155 billion, more than ever before.

There are 38 billionaires this year, with fortunes originating in everything from cars to cosmetics to Chardonnay. That’s more than double the 18 billionaires we found on our first list in 2015 and up from 31 billionaires last year. The minimum net worth to make the cut is $350 million, up from $300 million last year. Back in 2015, when we ranked only 50 women, the minimum to qualify was $250 million. Thirty six members of the original list from a decade ago made the 2025 edition.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, I'm Maggie McGrath, editor of Forbes Women.
0:06.0	This year marks the 10th anniversary of a Forbes franchise list known as America's richest self-made women.
0:16.0	Joining me now is an editor who has worked on the list since its inception. My colleague, assistant managing
0:22.4	editor, Carrie Dolan. Carrie, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Maggie. Great to be here.
0:28.6	So the list is out now. And before we dive into what we will find on the 2025 edition of America's
0:35.2	Riches Self-Made Women, I would love to zoom back a little bit. Take us back
0:39.4	10 years. What was the inspiration behind creating this list and this franchise? Yeah, so I give
0:46.2	credit to Louisa Kroll, who is an executive editor now. She was a longtime editor along with me
0:53.9	on the billionaires list and we were both
0:57.0	frustrated at the low number of women on the list, particularly women who had built their own fortunes.
1:04.0	Many of the women on the billionaires list either inherited their fortunes from a late husband or a father.
1:10.0	And there weren't, it's hard to have a
1:11.4	billion dollar fortune. So we started this list, at Lisa's, Louisa's idea, to shine a light on
1:17.9	entrepreneurial success of women. We launched with 50 women in 2015, and in 2020, we expanded to
1:25.0	100 women on the list. And we've been doing 100 women ever since then.
1:28.9	A hundred women ever since then.
1:30.7	And can you give a sense for how fortunes have changed over the years?
1:34.9	Who was the richest woman in 2015?
1:37.2	And is she still on the list this year?
1:39.6	So the richest woman in 2015 was Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos.
1:47.0	So she is not on the list anymore. She is in jail now. And her company and Theranos value
1:53.0	went to zero. So this was capturing a moment in time. As we do with all these lists, we
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