In the glittering world of global billionaires, where fortunes rise and fall with the tides of markets and new ideas, Alice Walton is a shining example of a lasting legacy. As of September 2025, the 75-year-old Walmart heiress is the richest woman in the U.S., with a net worth of an incredible $106 billion. This is the 10th time in the past 11 years that she has been at the top of the Forbes 400 list, and it also makes her the first American woman to break the $100 billion mark. In a time when tech giants and entrepreneurial disruptors are in charge, Walton’s rise shows how powerful retail innovation and family businesses can be.
Alice Louise Walton is the only daughter of Sam Walton, the visionary founder of Walmart, and his wife Helen Robson Walton. She was born on October 7, 1949, in Newport, Arkansas. The story of Sam Walton going from rags to riches is an American legend. He started with one discount store in 1962 and built Walmart into the world’s largest retailer by focusing on low prices every day, efficient supply chains, and operations that were good for the community. By the time he died in 1992, Walmart had changed the way people shopped, making billions of dollars and hiring more than a million people. Alice, the youngest of four kids, got not only a piece of this empire but also a plan for success that has made her family the richest in the world.
Walton’s road to wealth was anything but straight. She got a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1971. After that, she worked for a short time as a buyer of children’s clothes at Walmart, which was part of the family business. But she had other plans. She got into finance in the 1970s and worked as a stockbroker for E.F. Hutton in New Orleans. In the 1980s, she moved back to Arkansas and ran the family’s Arvest Bank’s investment operations. She took a big risk and started her own lending and brokerage business, Llama Company, in 1988 with $19.5 million from her family. Llama eventually went out of business because of money problems, including a car accident in 1989 that left her with a permanent limp. However, these early attempts showed Walton’s independent side.
Walton’s wealth is now completely dependent on how well Walmart does. She is one of the two people in charge of Walton Enterprises, one of the family’s holding companies that owns almost half of the retail giant. Walmart’s fiscal year ended on January 31, 2025, and the company made $681 billion in sales. This was due to strong consumer spending despite rising prices and Walmart’s dominance in the grocery and e-commerce markets.
Walton’s share, which is thought to be about 11% of the company based on equal distribution among Sam Walton’s four kids, has grown in value. Her net worth went up 47% from $72.3 billion in 2024 to $106 billion, thanks to a 40% rise in Walmart shares. This growth was faster than even the tech-driven rises of people like Elon Musk, whose wealth reached $428 billion but whose ups and downs are nothing compared to Walmart’s steady rise.
Walton’s accomplishment is even more impressive because she took the title of the world’s richest woman from Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the L’Oréal heiress. Meyers, who had held the title since 2022, was worth $89 billion after a drop in cosmetics stocks. Walton’s lead of $17 billion shows how different things are going for Walmart and luxury beauty. Walmart’s basic goods did well in an uncertain economy, but luxury beauty didn’t.
Walton is the only American woman with more money than MacKenzie Scott ($36 billion) and Julia Koch ($77 billion), making her a unique force. She is the 15th richest person in the world, behind her brothers Rob ($110 billion) and Jim ($109 billion), who are still involved in family businesses like Arvest Bank.
The Walton family is the richest family in the world, with a combined net worth of more than $432 billion. But Walton’s story is more than just about getting things. Her siblings are on the board of Walmart, but she has taken a different path in the arts and philanthropy, using her inheritance to bring about cultural and social change. She started the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2011. That’s where her family is from. The museum, which cost $1.6 billion to build and was mostly paid for by family trusts, has works by famous Americans like Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, and Mark Rothko. It is located in the middle of 120 acres of Ozark trails and makes art more accessible by allowing free entry to over a million people each year. The core of Walton’s collection is her personal collection, which includes works by John Singer Sargent and Asher B. Durand. This shows her lifelong love of American art.
Her giving goes far beyond looks. In the last ten years, Walton has given almost $6.1 billion to five family foundations. These foundations have given out $1.7 billion in grants for education, health, and economic opportunity.
She started the Alice L. Walton Foundation in 2017 to help arts programs at colleges and universities and projects like the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ efforts to provide healthy meals to students. Walton used to be a horse lover and even owned a cutting horse farm in Texas. Now, she focuses on her health. The Heartland Whole Health Institute is an 85,000-square-foot building on the Crystal Bridges campus that combines art, nature, and healthcare. It offers everything from yoga to medical consultations.
The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine is Walton’s most ambitious project yet. It is a non-profit school that will change the way medical students learn. Construction started in 2023 near Crystal Bridges after the project was announced in 2021 with $15 million in initial funding. In July 2025, it welcomed its first class of 48 MD students, and for the first five cohorts, it didn’t charge tuition, which cost $250 million.
The curriculum focuses on holistic care, which means taking care of all aspects of a person’s health, including their physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being. At the white coat ceremony, Walton said, “Our goal is to make sure that students have a life-changing educational experience.”
The school is accredited and ready to open, which supports her vision of community-based, preventive medicine that is different from traditional models.
People have noticed this change in the company’s focus on giving back. TIME’s 2025 TIME100 Philanthropy list praised Walton for “bridging the inequality gap in the arts” through private efforts that meet the needs of the community.
Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, praised her radical approach: no government funding, just targeted impact. She also gets money from the Walton Family Foundation for environmental projects, with a focus on saving water, which is a nod to Arkansas’s natural heritage.
Critics, on the other hand, point out the strange ways her wealth came about. People have criticized Walmart’s low-wage business model for how it treats workers, and Walton’s lavish lifestyle—rumored to include a $4.3 million art purchase in 2019—sparks debates about inequality. But her work in Bentonville has brought the area back to life, turning a small town into an arts center and helping the local economies. The terminal at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is even named after her because she helped with its construction.
Walton’s record-breaking net worth means more than just personal success; it shows how Walmart has changed with the times, from drone deliveries to AI-driven inventory. Walton is a new kind of billionaire who uses her money for the good of society. She focuses on health and culture. She still loves horses at 75 and lives in Fort Worth, Texas. She rides through life with quiet determination. Alice Walton isn’t just rich in 2025; she’s changing what it means to be rich.
