World's second richest woman worth £70bn but you will never have heard of her

The second richest woman in the world is worth £68.5 billion (or $92.4b), but most people won’t have even heard her name.

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, 72, is an heiress to the L'Oréal fortune, founded by her grandfather Eugene Paul Louis Schueller.

She had served on the board of directors since 1997 - until February this year when she announced that she would be retiring.

Bettencourt Meyers became the reigning heiress to the beauty giant in 2017 after the death of her mother.

Her battle for her inheritance then played out in a sensational trial in France, and eight people were eventually found guilty of exploiting her mother, Liliane Bettencourt.

She is currently in 20th place on the Forbes billionaires list, which ranks the richest people in the world.

But what exactly does Bettencourt Meyers do with her money? The family’s philanthropic foundation is known for its work encouraging science and the arts, and her family agreed to donate $226 million to repair Notre Dame Cathedral after it was damaged in the 2019 fire.

Despite her immense wealth, Bettencourt Meyers said she has always had the same friends by her side. She told Le Monde, the French newspaper, that she had always been “quite attentive to the sincerity of others” when she was younger, explaining: “If someone had wanted to marry me on the pretext that I had money, I would have seen it.”

She also said that she was careful about how she raised her two sons to “protect them” from becoming obsessed with money. “Our method was to spend a lot of time with them. I always traveled with both of them, but also with one, then the other, separately. We interested them in the outside world, in culture, in art. My husband and I always make sure to listen to them, to let them achieve their goals,” Bettencourt Meyers said.

The richest woman in the world is Alice Walton, 75, sitting in 16th place on the Forbes billionaires list, who is worth about £84 billion ($112.5b). Walton is the only daughter of Sam Walton, the Walmart founder, and has a career as an art curator. She owns the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, which exhibits work by artists like Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.

She has said that she is “committed to increasing access to arts, improving education, enhancing health, and advancing economic opportunity for all”.

Just below Bettencourt Meyers is Julia Koch and family in 22nd place on the billionaires list. Koch, 63, inherited a 42% stake with her children in Koch Inc. from husband David Koch after his death in 2019. She has a net worth of about £55.3 billion ($74.2b).