Australia’s 29 richest women from Gina Rinehart to Canva’s Melanie Perkins
Meet the women in control of $127bn across the country from fashion to tech and two new sisters who have rocketed into this year’s Richest 250.
They’re the 29 women in control of $127bn.
The group of Australia’s wealthiest females appear on the 2025 edition of The List - Australia’s Richest 250, led by billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
But the other Australian female founders and entrepreneurs on The List own and run some of the country’s most impressive businesses.
Melanie Perkins has built a technology giant at Canva, and joins Nicola Forrest and Mrs Rinehart in the top 10 of The List this year.
Billionaires Betty Klimenko and Monica Saunders-Weinberg join The List for the first time this year, joining a stellar cast of women including the owners of brands like RM Williams, Zimmermann and Bing Lee, and the chair of global giant Tesla.
Here are the richest women on The List for 2025
Gina Rinehart ($46.34bn)
Rinehart’s estimated wealth falls this year from $50.48bn in 2024 due to an overall drop in the value of iron ore mining firms around the world, but Hancock Prospecting remains a financial powerhouse.
Australia’s biggest private company made a bumper $5.57bn profit from $14.73bn revenue in 2024, mostly from iron ore mining at its Roy Hill flagship mine and exports – though the business also owns assets such as the Rossi Boots and Driza-Bone brands, commercial and agricultural property and a billion-dollar mining share portfolio.
Nicola Forrest ($16.06bn)
Forrest is forging ahead with her own philanthropy plans via her Coaxial Foundation, which will use income from her business arm, Coaxial Ventures, to back initiatives to help children and Australian families.
Coaxial Ventures owns 50 million shares in iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group, founded by Forrest’s husband Andrew Forrest.
The pair split in 2023 and while most of their fortune is jointly held, Coaxial is in Nicola’s name only and accounts for the difference in estimated wealth between the two.
While they have said they will not divorce, the two are both billionaires and also have an equal ownership of the private Tattarang business empire that spans cattle holdings, brands including RM Williams, Perth commercial property and other investments.
Melanie Perkins ($14.02bn, with Cliff Obrecht)
Perkins and husband Obrecht oversee a technology market darling now valued at $US32bn after some share sales by investors and staff last year, an increase of about $US6bn.
That, and the falling Australian dollar, account for their increase in wealth this year.
The duo started in business with a design tool to simplify the creation of school yearbooks, and Canva is now a global graphic design giant used by 200 million users all over the world for presentations, social media posts, videos and logos.
Annualised revenue reached about $US2.5bn last year.
Suzanne Walker ($6.89bn)
Walker is the wife of the late property legend Lang Walker, who built a real estate empire with his Walker Corporation over a six-decade career.
The business is now under the ownership of Sue Walker and children Blake Walker, Chad Walker and Georgia Vesperman (nee Walker).
Walker Corp’s managers have flagged a strategy to keep rolling out its $40bn pipeline by completing the projects Lang Walker – who died in January last year – had planned, including huge commercial assets across capital cities and residential subdivisions in Australia and Malaysia.
Angela Bennett ($6.44bn)
Bennett’s wealth is derived from the big iron ore royalties that Wright Prospecting receives annually from mining giant Rio Tinto.
The business was started by Bennett’s late father Peter Wright – formerly the business partner of Gina Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock – and is now owned by Bennett and her nieces, Alexandra Burt and Leonie Baldock.
In February, Wright Prospecting sold most of its holding in the Rhodes Ridge joint venture with Rio Tinto to Mitsui. Bennett is keeping a 10 per cent stake but sold 15 per cent for more than $3bn. Bennett has put much of her wealth into investment business AMB Holdings, which has more than $1.9bn net assets including shares and commercial property.
Alexandra Burt & Leonie Baldock ($4.58bn combined)
The estimated wealth of sisters Baldock and Burt was boosted by the $4bn sale in February of their share of the Rhodes Ridge project.
It was held in Wright Prospecting, started by their late grandfather, Peter Wright. He was the one-time business partner of Gina Rinehart’s late father, Lang Hancock.
The sisters own Wright Prospecting with their billionaire aunt, Angela Bennett. Wright Prospecting is locked in a dispute over billions of dollars in iron ore assets and royalties with Rinehart.
Baldock’s investments are managed by Quercus Group, which has put capital into real estate developer Sirona Urban. Burt owns The Landsmith Collection luxury tourism and agriculture business, and chairs the Next25 think tank.
Bianca Rinehart, Ginia Rinehart, Hope Welker ($3.61bn each)
Gina Rinehart’s four children (including John Hancock) have an equal share of the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust, the trust fund that owns almost 24 per cent of Hancock Prospecting.
Their estimated wealth is based on an equal share of the paper valuation of that stake. Control of the trust, and the wealth attached to it and dividends that could flow to it, is the subject of an ongoing legal battle. Some of the children have claimed their late grandfather Lang Hancock intended for them to share the family wealth via the family trust.
Vicky Teoh ($2.91bn, with David Teoh)
ASX-listed Tuas looms as another telco winner for David Teoh and his family. Tuas operates the low-cost Simba mobile phone brand in Singapore, where it reached the one million subscriber mark in 2024.
Tuas shares doubled during the year, after also doubling in value in 2023. David Teoh is the company’s chairman and major shareholder.
He and wife Vicky started Australian-based TPG after moving to Australia from Malaysia in 1986, building it into one of Australia’s biggest mobile phone and internet companies before it merged with Vodafone Hutchison in 2020.
The Teohs remain TPG shareholders and also have their own private investment business, Teoh Capital.
Prudence MacLeod ($2.32bn)
MacLeod, the eldest daughter of Rupert Murdoch, and husband Alistair founded their Macdoch Group family office in 2019 with her portion of the share received by the Murdoch family from the $US71bn merger of 21st Century Fox with Disney.
Macdoch’s Australian arm invests in farming and agriculture assets with the aim of tackling climate change, and has a venture capital business that has invested in 30 startups and early-stage companies including Canva.
Macdoch also has a London office and philanthropic foundation with more than $130m in assets
Betty Klimenko & Monica Saunders-Weinberg ($1.98bn combined)
The children of late Westfield co-founder John Saunders oversee an investment empire that has net assets worth $1.85bn, including an extensive portfolio of real estate assets in Australia such as the Eastgardens Westfield shopping centre and offices in the US, where Saunders-Weinberg owns property in Los Angeles.
Terrace Tower also has a lending business providing private credit to wealthy families. Klimenko separately owns a Supercars team, Erebus Motorsport.
Charlotte Vidor ($1.68bn, with Ervin Vidor)
The Vidors are Australian property and hospitality pioneers, founding their Toga group six decades ago with builder Tony Stillone with the development of two blocks of nine units in the inner Sydney suburb of Glebe.
Today, Toga has a development arm that has built projects such as the $500m Surry Hills Village that opened last year, and a hotel business that has more than 80 hotels in Australasia, Asia and Europe.
Charlotte and Ervin brought the concept of serviced apartments back from a holiday in the US in the early 1980s, creating the Medina Randwick service apartment complex in 1982.
Gretel Packer ($1.53bn)
Packer mostly avoids the headlines, devoting much of her time to philanthropy. But she does make the news for property transactions in Sydney, including emerging as the surprise buyer of the historic Metro-Minerva theatre in Potts Point last year.
A developer wanted to turn the site into a 63-room, five-star boutique hotel with an auditorium for 250 people but local residents opposed the idea.
Packer will likely revive the old venue, adding to her collection of commercial and residential holdings in Sydney. Her wealth stems from her share of the settlement of the family fortune with her brother James in 2015, and includes the luxury Ellerston rural retreat near Scone in NSW.
Rhonda Barro ($1.30bn, with Raymond Barro)
The Barro family control a substantial concrete empire via their own private Barro Group and now the joint-owned, privatised AdBri. Irish building materials giant CRH and Barro privatised AdBri last year in a $2.1bn deal that valued the Barro stake at almost $1bn.
The Barros are best known as the name behind pre-mixed concrete brand Pronto, and their business operates 20 concrete plants and employs 600 people in Victoria and Queensland – some in competition with AdBri.
Dave Barro started Barro Group in 1946 after moving to Australia in the 1930s from Italy.
Imelda Roche ($1.30bn)
The Roche family business is now underpinned by property and tourism assets, building high-end coastal residential communities in northern NSW and Queensland and owning assets such as an Irish pub, a vineyard in the Hunter Valley and a marina.
Roche Group also has a residential construction firm, Riba Homes.
Roche and late husband Bill made their fortune with the Nutrimetics business they introduced to Australia in 1968 and later expanded around the world. They sold the business in 1997 and put the proceeds into property.
Maree Isaacs ($1.27bn)
Isaacs capped a tumultuous year at software giant WiseTech in 2024, when she agreed to sell her 8.17 per cent stake in the ASX-listed company to her billionaire co-founder Richard White.
Isaacs helped White to start WiseTech in 1994, handling most of the back office functions at the business after the pair had previously worked together at Real Tech Systems Integration. Under the terms of the deal with White, Isaacs reaped an initial payment of $285m and future quarterly payments based on the volume weighted average price of WiseTech shares over a period of up to seven years.
Judith Neilson ($1.23bn)
Neilson has put more than $450m in financial assets alone in her Judith Neilson Foundation, making her one of Australia’s biggest living philanthropists.
She transferred the proceeds from selling all her shares in Platinum Asset Management, the funds management business founded by ex-husband Kerr Neilson, into property and other investments, as well as charitable pursuits.
Her White Rabbit Gallery in inner Sydney is home to one of the world’s largest collections of contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, featuring about 800 artists and 4000 pieces.
Jamuna Gurung ($1.06bn, with Shesh Ghale)
Ghale and his wife Gurung are grappling with a mandated slowdown in international student numbers to Australia that is yet to affect their main business.
They started the private tertiary education business Melbourne Institute of Technology, which has grown into a substantial education institution, after moving here from Nepal three decades ago.
The duo have built up a portfolio of Melbourne commercial properties, some of which house MIT facilities, and plan to build hotels as part of several mixed-use projects over the next decade.
They own hotels in Bruges, Belgium and one set to open in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, where they also have extensive philanthropic endeavours, later this year
Marnie Lewis-Miller & Shay Lewis-Thorp ($1.04bn combined)
A decade of construction on homes for thousands of Gold Coast residents is under way at Lewis Land’s Harbour Shores project, a vacant 16ha site held by the business for 40 years.
It is that patience that has allowed the group, now under the ownership of the daughters of late property developer Bernard Lewis, to become one of the biggest land developers in the country.
Lewis Land has developed more than 20,000 residential land lots since Lewis formed the business in 1957, from Melbourne to Sydney and digging canals on the Gold Coast.
The group also owns shopping centres in Adelaide, Sydney and the Gold Coast, and pubs and hotels in NSW.
Nechama Werdiger & Family ($1.01bn)
Werdiger was born in Ukraine to a Jewish family and fled to Uzbekistan during World War II, later settling in Australia.
She is the widow of the late Nathan Werdiger, a Holocaust survivor who died 10 years ago.
He made his initial fortune in the textile industry and then buying commercial properties. That collection of real estate assets, mostly in Melbourne’s CBD, is the basis of the family’s wealth.
Robyn Denholm ($972m)
Denholm’s estimated wealth increases in line with the share price of electric vehicle giant Telsa, headed by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.
Tesla shares increased markedly after the election of US President Donald Trump late last year, with Musk emerging as a key Trump confidant and backer – though declining in price since January.
Denholm owns Tesla shares and has been exercising share options and selling down some stock in the past year. She joined the Tesla board in 2014 after working in high-level executive roles in Silicon Valley, where she moved in 2001.
She has put her fortune into a family office, Wollemi Capital, which is now the majority owner of National Basketball League club Sydney Kings and WNBL side Sydney Flames. Denholm has also invested with Larry Kestelman in the WNBL itself.
Nicky & Simone Zimmermann ($885m combined)
The Zimmermann sisters are behind a true Australian fashion business success, with their eponymous business pressing ahead with expansion plans around the world.
The US is a key growth market for the luxury fashion brand they founded in 1991, accounting for about 35 per cent of Zimmermann sales, which passed the $500m mark last year. (Australian sales are about 25 per cent).
Last year they opened their first Middle East boutique in Dubai, and more outlets are planned across Europe.
The business is valued at $1.75bn after US private equity investor Advent International bought a majority stake in 2023, a deal that followed previous sell-downs by the Zimmermann sisters to US and Italian investors.
Jo Horgan ($807m, with Peter Wetenhall)
Horgan started her skincare and cosmetics business in 1997 and has overseen spectacular growth since.
Annual revenue has approached the $600m mark. Husband Peter Wetenhall joined the company eight years after it was founded, and there are now more than 100 Mecca stores across Australia and New Zealand.
Mecca last year faced a string of allegations from some of its workforce, ranging from breaches of workplace laws to claims of a high-pressure culture, which Mecca did not publicly comment on.
Yenda Lee & Family ($772m)
The Lee family runs the Bing Lee chain of electrical goods outlets, named after Yenda Lee’s late father-in-law, Bing.
He and son Ken Lee ran the business, which now has more than 30 stores in NSW.
The company has famously refused to expand its bricks-and-mortar stores beyond NSW (apart from one Victorian outlet), decrying such expansion for undermining relationships with staff. Yenda’s son Lionel is now chief executive, with his four children also working in the family business. The Lee family also has property interests across Sydney.
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout