12. PEGGY CHERNG

$2.4 billion

SOURCE: Fast food

AGE: 74 • RESIDENCE: Las Vegas

SELF-MADE SCORE: 9

A McDonnell Douglas and 3M veteran, she quit to help her husband, Andrew, open the first Panda Express restaurant in 1983. The two still run the $4.5 billion (2021 U.S. revenue) fast casual chain as co-CEOs, overseeing its 2,400 outposts. The active real estate investors—who own houses, apartments and an office park in Pasadena, California, and Hawaii, among others—joined a consortium last fall to buy the Cosmopolitan resort in Las Vegas for $5.65 billion.