Forbes billionaires list: Meet the nine richest self-made women

Forbes has released its annual billionaires list, and nestled among the usual suspects were women who have made or helped make their own fortunes, in industries ranging from television to real estate to clothing. These are the nine richest self-made women on Forbes 2013 Billionaires List.  

4. Chan Laiwa

Matthias Rietschel/AP/File
Chan Laiwa, pictured, saw her net worth increase by $570 million last year.

Net worth: $4.1 billion 

Country: China 

Source of wealth: Real estate – Fu Wah International Group

Overall Forbes rank: #316

Ms. Chan founded Fu Wah International Group, one of Beijing’s largest real estate developers, in 1998. And she had a very good year in 2012: Due to commercial property value increases in Beijing, her net worth increased by $570 million last year. Born poor, she is considered one of only 19 truly self-made female billionaires in the world, in that she didn’t make her money alongside a spouse.  

6 of 9

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.