Walmart heiress Alice Walton is the world's richest woman with $135 billion

Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart, the discount store chain, is the richest woman in the world with a net worth of $135 billion according to Forbes. Her fortune grew by $33 billion in a single year as Walmart stock climbed 30%, making her the 14th richest person overall.

Behind the massive numbers is a lifetime spent building an art empire and funding philanthropic projects across the country. Walton bought her first art reproduction at age 10 for $2 and later founded her own investment bank, Llama Company, before pouring billions into museums and schools.

In Bentonville, Arkansas, she opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which launched with an endowment four times that of the famous Whitney Museum in New York. She has also contributed more than $6 billion to family charitable foundations and founded her own medical school, where tuition has been waived for early student cohorts to train doctors for rural and underserved communities.

Her spending spans luxury properties too, including a luxury condo overlooking Central Park in New York City and a sprawling ranch in Millsap, Texas. According to Business Insider, her personal life remains closely guarded even as her philanthropy reshapes entire university programs and arts institutions.

When a single retail dynasty generates a personal fortune larger than the economic output of small nations, every shift in store traffic carries monumental weight. That is a lot of shopping carts.

Photo: Stephen Ironside, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped