Amancio Ortega in 2017.
Amancio Ortega, the 86-year-old Spanish founder of clothing retailer Zara, is worth around $54 billion.
Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, the world’s largest clothing retailer. Besides Zara, he owns Pull&Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, among others.
Here’s how he got his start, built a fast-fashion empire, and became one of the world’s wealthiest moguls.
The 86-year-old Ortega was born in northwestern Spain in 1936, the son of a railroad worker and a stay-at-home mother.
AP Photo/Iago Lopez
Source: Bloomberg
He started making clothes with his siblings and future wife, Rosalia Mera, in their home in the early 1960s. In 1975, Ortega and Mera opened the first Zara store in downtown La Coruna, Spain.A Zara store in La Coruna, Spain, in 2012.
Jesus Sancho/AP Images
Source: Bloomberg
“Zara” wasn’t his first choice for the store’s name. He was planning to name it Zorba after the film “Zorba the Greek,” but there was already a local bar with the same name. Because he’d already bought molds of the letters Z-O-R-B-A, he made do with what he had and ended up with the name Zara.Shoppers walked by a closed Zara store at a Moscow shopping mall on March 26, 2022.
Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images.
Source: Bloomberg
Ten years later, in 1985, Ortega incorporated Zara into a holding company called Inditex. He and Mera separated around that time, but she remained the company’s second-largest shareholder.Inditex headquarters in La Coruna, Spain, in 2012.
Jesus Sancho/AP
Source: Bloomberg
Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothing retailer. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands, including Zara, one of the best-known and most successful fashion brands in the world with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries …
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Source: Bloomberg, Forbes
… Pull&Bear, a teen-focused retailer with more than 970 stores in 76 markets around Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America …
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Source: Insider
… Bershka, which is the second-largest chain by store count in Inditex’s entire operation, with its sales representing 9% of the total revenue for the group …
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Source: Insider
… plus Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Uterqüe, and Zara Home.
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Source: Insider
Inditex has grown into a fast-fashion behemoth. The company reported 27.7 billion euros in revenue – $29.1 billion at current exchange rates – during the 2021 fiscal year and online sales surged, nudging the company closer to becoming one of the world’s largest e-commerce sellers.
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Source: WWD
In August 2013, Ortega’s ex-wife, Rosalia Mera, who had become Spain’s richest woman, died at age 69.Rosalia Mera in 2010.
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Source: AP
Mera and Ortega’s daughter, Sandra Ortega Mera, inherited the title of Spain’s richest woman after her mother’s death.Sandra Ortega Mera at her mother’s funeral on August 17, 2013, in Oleiros, Spain.
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Source: Bloomberg
Worth an estimated $6.67 billion, Ortega Mera controls 5% of Inditex, though she’s not involved in the company.Sandra Ortega Mera and her husband at her mother’s funeral.
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Source: Bloomberg, Forbes
Ortega has been married to his second wife, Flora Perez, since 2001.Flora Perez and Amancio Ortega at a party in La Coruna, Spain, in November 2018.
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Source: Bloomberg
Ortega and Perez share two children, including a daughter, Marta, who manages fashion merchandise at Zara.Marta Ortega at Paris Fashion Week in January 2019.
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Source: Brides,
She married top Spanish equestrian Sergio Álvarez Moya in February 2012, but the couple separated in 2015.Sergio Álvarez Moya and Marta Ortega the night before their wedding in February 2012.
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Source: Brides, ThinkSpain.com
In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta,— then a modeling agent and son of designer Roberto Torrettain — at her family’s home in Galicia, Spain. Spanish publications called the ceremony, which reportedly included a socialite-studded guest list, the “wedding of the year.”Carlos Torretta and Marta Ortega at their wedding pre-party in November 2018.
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Source: Brides, W Magazine
Marta Ortega was long considered a favorite to follow in her father’s footsteps and lead Inditex. He stepped down as Inditex’s chairman in 2011 and handed the reins to executive president Pablo Isla, but in 2022, Marta Ortega took over as Inditex’s chairwoman.Amancio and Marta Ortega.
Getty Images / Europa Press Entertainment / Contributor
Source: Reuters
These days, Amancio Ortega is the 23rd-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $53.9 billion.
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Source: Bloomberg
Since Inditex’s initial public offering in 2001, Ortega has received more than 9 billion euros, or about $10 billion, in dividends, according to Bloomberg.
Miguel Vidal/ Reuters
Source: Bloomberg
Most of his cash has been reinvested in real estate through his company’s investment arm, Pontegadea. In 2011, he bought the tallest skyscraper in Spain, the 515-foot Torre Picasso in Madrid, for $536 million.
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Source: Reuters
And in 2016, he purchased another Madrid skyscraper, Cepsa Tower, for $551 million.
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Source: Reuters
He invested in the Epic Residences and Hotel, a luxurious, 54-story skyscraper in Miami …
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Source: Forbes
… in 2015, he paid $370 million for an entire block of prime property in Miami Beach …A view of Lincoln Road in Miami Beach.
Getty Images
Source: Miami Herald
… he reportedly bought an office block in London’s affluent Mayfair neighborhood that borders Hyde Park …Mayfair in London.
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Source: Reuters
… and a property on London’s prime shopping street, Oxford Street.Oxford Street in London.
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Source: Reuters
In 2015, he bought the historic E.V. Haughwout Building in SoHo, New York City, for $145 million.The EV Haughwout & Company building circa 1974.
Edmund Vincent Gillon/Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images
Source: Reuters, The Real Deal
Ortega picked up another New York property in 2016, this time a hotel at 70 Park Avenue in Murray Hill for $67.6 million.A subway platform in New York’s Murray Hill neighborhood.
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Source: The Real Deal
In 2019, Ortega went on a real estate spending spree, acquiring a downtown Chicago hotel for $72.5 million, as well as a building in central Washington D.C. and two office buildings in Seattle that Amazon had leased, for a combined $1.1 billion.The exterior of the Amazon office buildings in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
Ted S. Warren/AP
Source: Bloomberg
Ortega also owns some residential property. He and his wife live in La Coruna, Spain, near a major port of the Atlantic Ocean.
Brais Seara/AP
Source: Forbes
At one point, Ortega owned the Pazo de Dodro farm and estate near La Coruna. The estate was the site of his daughter Marta’s first wedding, but it’s unclear whether Ortega still owns it.
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Source: El Mundo
In 2012, it was reported that Ortega drove an Audi A8 luxury sedan.Amancio Ortega at a horse jumping competition in Spain in 2013.
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Source: Elite Choice
Ortega also owned an $84 million superyacht named Drizzle, but he reportedly put it up for sale in 2022.
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Source: Daily Mail, AutoEvolution
But he rarely jets off on vacation anyway — in fact, Ortega didn’t take his first vacation until 2001, after Inditex’s initial public offering.
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Source: Bloomberg
Ortega is known for being low-key, as executives go. Bloomberg reported in 2012 that he eschewed an office to sit among the designers and fabric experts at Zara’s headquarters, while another report said he typically ate lunch with his employees in the company cafeteria every day.The Zara factory in La Coruna, Spain, in 2005.
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Source: Bloomberg, Adlatina
Ortega sticks to a simple uniform of a shirt and slacks and doesn’t typically wear clothes from his own companies, according to Bloomberg.
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Source: Bloomberg
In his free time, Ortega is often seen at equestrian events. He also built an equestrian center near La Coruna, as his daughter Marta competes in show jumping.Marta Ortega and Amancio Ortega at a horse jumping competition in Spain in 2013.
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Source: Getty Images, Bloomberg
Ortega founded the Amancio Ortega Foundation in 2001, a charitable organization focused on education and social welfare. In 2017, the foundation donated $344 million to Spanish public hospitals to provide the latest technology in breast cancer screening and treatment.
MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP/Getty Images
Source: Amancio Ortega Foundation, Philanthropy News Digest
In 2020, Ortega donated roughly $68 million to help combat the pandemic, including buying ventilators, face masks, and COVID tests for the Spanish Health System.
Misha Friedman/Getty Images
Source: Barron’s
Despite running a major fashion retailer for four decades, Ortega is intensely private — there were no public photographs of him until 1999, and in 2012, Bloomberg noted that he had only ever granted interviews to three journalists. One Zara employee who worked with him told The Economist in 2016 that “the true story of Amancio Ortega has not been told.”Amancio Ortega in 2013.
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Source: Bloomberg, The Economist
Ashley Lutz, Mallory Schlossberg, and Melissa Wiley contributed to an earlier version of this story.
Correction: March 27, 2023 – An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of money that Amancio Ortega donated to combat the pandemic. He donated roughly $68 million.
