Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the world’s richest woman and heiress to the L’Oréal fortune.
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Françoise Bettencourt Meyers inherited one-third of L’Oreal from her mother in 2017, making her the richest woman in the world with a net worth of $82.1 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Bettencourt Meyers had a fraught relationship with her mother. She filed a criminal complaint against the elder Bettencourt’s closest friend, accusing him of trying to manipulate the elderly heiress out of the family fortune.
Unlike a typical billionaire heiress, Bettencourt Meyers has focused her attention on her career as an author and a member of L’Oreal’s board of directors.
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Schueller was a pharmacist by trade, who invented a new formula for hair dye in 1908 that he called L’Oreal. The product made Schueller extremely wealthy.
Bettencourt Meyers’ mother, Liliane Bettencourt, inherited Schueller’s entire fortune in 1957 and became a prominent socialite, according to Bloomberg. Bettencourt Meyers’ father, André Bettencourt, was a French politician who served as a government minister and senator, Time reported.
The Bettencourts were well known in French society for their glamorous and exclusive parties. However, Bettencourt Meyers never indulged in the same glamorous lifestyle as her socialite parents. She preferred staying in to play the piano or write, Vanity Fair reported in 2017.
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The mother-daughter relationship turned stormy when Bettencourt Meyers was a teenager, according to Vanity Fair.
“Françoise was heavy and slow,” Bettencourt once said according to Vanity Fair, “always one lap behind me.”
Bettencourt also called Françoise “a cold child” in a 2009 interview with a French newspaper, according to The New York Times.
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Time’s Tom Sancton called Bettencourt Meyers a “serious-minded intellectual.”
The heiress has written books on topics ranging from Greek mythology to Jewish-Christian relations, Bloomberg reports. In 2008, she published a Biblical commentary entitled “Regard sur la Bible,” and in 2020, she published a book about hearing and deafness, according to her Amazon page.
Yves Saint Laurent, Kiehl’s, and Urban Decay.
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Bettencourt Meyers serves on several board committees, including strategy and sustainability, human resources, and nominations and governance.
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In a lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers alleged that her mother’s closest friend, photographer François-Marie Banier, used his “platonic love affair” with Bettencourt to manipulate the elderly heiress into giving him approximately $1.86 billion worth of cash, art, and real estate, The New York Times reported.
Bettencourt Meyers filed a criminal complaint against Banier in December 2007. Bettencourt disputed her daughter’s assertion, saying she freely shared her assets with Banier, according to The Times. In a 2008 letter to Banier, Bettencourt described their relationship: “With you, I am like a mother, a lover, all the feelings pass through me. It makes me tremble,” Vanity Fair reported.
Bettencourt Meyers told a French magazine in 2009 that Banier’s “objective is clear: break away my mother from our family to profit from her. I will not let it happen.”
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It was reported that Bettencourt had dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and that various people in her inner circle had used her confusion to take advantage of her financially. A former government official was accused of illegally receiving Bettencourt’s money to fund Sarkozy’s presidential campaign, though a case against the president was dropped due to lack of evidence.
The case eventually went to trial, and in 2015, Bainer was convicted along with seven other defendants of “abus de faiblesse,” or “abuse of weakness.” He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and forced to pay Bettencourt 158 million euros in damages. The jail sentence and payment were later reversed in an appeal, Vanity Fair reported.
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“I don’t see my daughter anymore and I don’t wish to,” Bettencourt said in a 2008 interview. “For me, my daughter has become something inert.”
A lawyer involved in the case told Vanity Fair: “The mother massacred the daughter, then the daughter massacred the mother.”
In 2011, Bettencourt was placed under the guardianship of her family due to concerns over her declining mental health.
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Bettencourt Meyers’ grandfather, Eugene Schueller, had publicly commended Adolf Hitler’s “dynamism” in the early years of Nazi Germany and was investigated as a Nazi collaborator after World War II ended, Insider previously reported.
Schueller was also a member of a secret society that plotted to overthrow France’s republican government in the 1930s. The group, which was linked to multiple murders and bombings, was bankrolled by Schueller, who allowed its meetings to be hosted at L’Oréal’s headquarters.
André Bettencourt, Bettencourt Meyers’ father, wrote anti-Semitic diatribes for the pro-German press in the early 1940s, Time reported, though he switched his allegiances and joined the Resistance. He was later decorated for his military service during World War II and went on to serve in the French government.
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The investigation stemmed from a criminal complaint filed by Bainer in 2015. At the time, Bettencourt Meyers said the payment she made to the witness was part severance payment, part personal loan, and not a bribe for the testimony.
That suit and Bettencourt Meyers’ countersuit against Bainer were resolved in a secret deal in 2016, according to Vanity Fair.
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The house is located in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb west of Paris. Neuilly-sur-Seine is known in France as “power suburb, a place not only of wealth but influence,” according to The Independent.
The Art deco mansion is where Bettencourt spent her final days, Time reported.
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The mansion was one of Bettencourt’s childhood homes, The New York Times reported.
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French police searched this home in 2010 as a part of the investigations surrounding the Bettencourt affair, Bloomberg reported at the time.
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The couple has two adult sons, Jean-Victor and Nicolas, according to Bloomberg. Jean-Victor began serving on L’Oreal’s board alongside Bettencourt Meyers, replacing his grandmother, in 2012.
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Bettencourt Meyers is worth $82.1 billion, Bloomberg estimates, making her the world’s wealthiest woman and the 11th-richest person in the world.
She and her family control 33% of L’Oréal, which remains the world’s largest cosmetics maker. The company owns mass-market drugstore brands like Maybelline, Essie, Garnier, and, of course, L’Oréal, as well as high-end beauty companies like Urban Decay, Lancôme, and Kiehl’s. L’Oréal also licenses the beauty divisions of luxury fashion houses like Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino.
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Bettencourt Meyers was among the French billionaires who pledged money after Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire in April 2019. She pledged to give $226 million to repair the Parisian church.
Bettencourt Meyers is also the president of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, the charity she cofounded in the 1980s. The foundation issues grants to support research in the life sciences and arts projects, according to its website.
Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this article.