4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
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The Harry Potter books transformed her from a single mother on welfare to an author with a ten-figure fortune—but her massive charity initiatives dropped her from the ranks of billionaires. Now, thanks to new Potterverse books, movies, a play, and several theme parks—and despite a divisive social-media presence—she is magically back in the three-comma club.
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0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, June 2nd. |
0:04.8 | Today on Forbes, J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. Again. |
0:10.4 | The dark arts of cancel culture have been no match for the magic of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. |
0:16.8 | If there was any price to be paid for placing herself at the center of the debate over transgender rights, |
0:21.9 | you wouldn't know it by looking at her pugnacious feed on X, formerly known as Twitter. |
0:26.7 | There, Rowling posts several times a day in support of gender fundamentalism |
0:30.9 | to her 14 million-plus followers, frequently trading Barbes with commenters, |
0:35.6 | even fracturing her relationship with Potter movie stars |
0:38.8 | Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, while toasting her own personal successes. |
0:45.2 | In mid-April, after the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman |
0:49.6 | is based on biological sex, she wrote, quote, I love it when a plan comes together. |
0:55.5 | The post's accompanying photo showed Rowling holding a cocktail and smoking a cigar aboard her |
1:01.5 | super yacht, which is valued at $150 million. |
1:05.8 | Bruising culture war aside, the 59-year-old Rowling's business empire is now larger than ever. In the four years |
1:13.0 | since she began posting about transgender rights in 2020, Forbes estimates Rowling has earned more than |
1:18.2 | $80 million per year from the sales of her books and the vast litany of Potterverse brand extensions, |
1:24.6 | including movies, TV shows, theme parks, video games, theater, and |
1:29.3 | merchandise. Even after factoring in high UK taxes and her extensive charity ventures, |
1:35.4 | she has comfortably rejoined the billionaire ranks with a net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes' |
1:41.9 | estimates. Rowling was previously a fixture on the Forbes |
1:45.9 | billionaires list from 2004 to 2011, the height of Pottermania, until new reporting in 2012 |
1:52.3 | uncovered $160 million in philanthropic giving. In the years since, she's built back her |
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