L’Oréal heiress was world’s richest woman
PARIS — Liliane Bettencourt, the L’Oréal cosmetics heiress and the world’s richest woman, has died at her home in a chic Parisian suburb. She was 94.
Bettencourt’s daughter, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, said in a statement Thursday that her mother “left peacefully” overnight in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Liliane Bettencourt was the only child of Eugene Schueller, who founded L’Oréal in the early 20th century. Forbes magazine estimated her fortune to be worth $39.5 billion US this year.
L’Oréal chairman and CEO Jean-Paul Agon expressed “great admiration” for Bettencourt. Agon said she “always looked” after the company and its employees and “she has personally contributed greatly to its success for many years.”
Born in 1922 in Paris, she married French politician André Bettencourt at the age of 27. Her husband served as a minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He died in 2007.
Liliane Bettencourt inherited the L’Oréal fortune upon the death of her father in 1957. When the company went public six years later, she continued to own a majority stake.
As the world’s leading beauty company, L’Oréal generated sales amounting to 25.8 billion euros in 2016 and employs 89,300 people worldwide.
Bettencourt’s name has been involved in a scandal known in France as the “Bettencourt Affair,” which has wound its way through French courts for years.
The case stemmed from a 2007 complaint filed by Bettencourt’s daughter accusing one of her mother’s closest friends, the photographer François-Marie Banier, of manipulating the widow into giving him artwork and cash.
In 2015, a French court handed Banier a three-year prison sentence on charges of swindling millions of euros from Bettencourt by taking advantage of her weak mental state.
Bettencourt is survived only by Françoise, who was born in 1953.