Millionaire Anna Shay is stealing the show on Netflix’s Bling Empire: Boucheron high jewellery, fashions from Alexander McQueen and Dior and US$330 caviar are some of her favourite things

Jan 21 , 2021

Anna Shay, one of the ultra-wealthy stars of Netflix’s Bling Empire. Photo: @annashay93/Instagram

The 60-year-old is giving her millennial co-stars Jaime Xie and Kane Lim a run for their money with lavish parties at her Beverly Hills mansion; she even flew Kelly Mi Li to Maison du Caviar in Paris for the finest Iranian beluga variety

Netflix’s new binge-worthy series Bling Empire is taking the world by storm. Following the wildly wealthy Asian and Asian-American community living and lounging in Los Angeles, the hit series has clued us in on how the other side lives – and the reception has been emphatic.

Interestingly, it’s not just the well-to-do millennials that are taking centre stage in the new unscripted series. Instead, a 60-year-old millionaire recluse has been stealing the show.

If you were blown away by Anna Shay’s generous private jet excursions to Paris or dinner parties at her million-dollar mansion on Bling Empire, here’s how else the minted matriarch of the reality series spends her coin.

How did she make her fortune?

Her co-star in the series, Kane Lim, gave us a brief rundown of the millionaire heiress’ history, saying in a confessional, “Anna Shay’s half Japanese and half Russian, and super, super wealthy … Her money comes from weapons. Her father sells bombs, guns, defence technology. And it’s worth like a few billion.”

Well, not quite. The billion-dollar family business is right on the money: her father, Edward Shay, was the CEO of weapons manufacturer PAE until he passed away in 1995. Shay and her brother sold the company in 2006 for a cool US$1.2 billion.

But her ethnicity is actually half white American, and (just about) half Japanese. Her mother, Ai-San, has a grandfather descended from Russian aristocracy.