A record 56 women made the list of female billionaires this year, up from 42 in 2016, says ‘Forbes’ magazine.

A record 56 women around the world made the female billionaires list this year, up from 42 in 2016, with a combined wealth of US$129 billion this year, says Forbes magazine.

Forbes released yesterday its World’s Self-Made Women Billionaires list, a day after International Women’s Day.

This year marks the first year wealth on the list has surpassed $100 billion.

A record high of 25% of the world’s women billionaires are self-made, compared with 21% in 2016. This percentage has more than doubled since 2009.

With the death of her husband Mike Ilitch in February 2017, Marian Ilitch, who owns the Little Caesars pizza chain and Detroit’s MotorCity Casino along with other investments held with her family, is the new richest woman in the US.

More than half of these enterprising women hail from Asia, with 29 self-made women billionaires from the region making the list. This includes the richest self-made woman in the world, Zhou Qunfei, whose publicly traded Lens Technology makes glass covers for mobile phones and tablets for customers like Apple and Samsung.

“This was the first year women from Vietnam and Japan made the female billionaires list,” said Luisa Kroll, managing editor of wealth at Forbes Media.

“Women are still the much rarer sex when it comes to wealth creation, but they are moving in the right direction.”

The country breakdown of self-made female billionaires includes 21 from China (37.5% of the list), 17 in the US (30%), five from Hong Kong, and three in the Britain. Countries with one woman listed include Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Switzerland and Vietnam.

The newcomer from Vietnam is Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao and from Japan is Yoshiko Shinohara, both the first self-made female billionaires from their respective countries.

India’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a returning billionaire to the list and the only self-made woman billionaire in her country.