10 richest beauty billionaires of 2023 – net worths, ranked: from LVMH boss Bernard Arnault and L’Oréal’s Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, to stars-turned-entrepreneurs Kim Kardashian and Rihanna
- LVMH is the fashion giant behind luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, and its boss Bernard Arnault regularly jostles with Elon Musk over the title of world’s richest man
- Françoise Bettencourt Meyers has consistently been the world’s richest woman since she inherited L’Oréal in 2017, while brothers Alain and Gerard Wertheimer co-own Chanel
But Arnault and Bettencourt Meyers have one thing in common: they’re both bosses of a beauty empire – LVMH and L’Oréal, respectively. The beauty sector, defined as skincare, fragrance, make-up and hair care, generated around US$430 billion in revenue last year, according to McKinsey & Company. The company also predicted that the sector will continue to grow rapidly by six per cent per year.
The beauty business not only generates hundreds of billions in profit each year, but also turns out some of the biggest billionaires in the world. So just who are these beauty billionaires?
10. Suh Kyung-bae (Amorepacific) – US$1.6 billion
As the chairman of Amorepacific, the largest cosmetic and skincare company in South Korea, Suh Kyung-bae, 60, became not only a billionaire but the second richest man in the country in 2015. Since then, he has always been among the top 10 wealthiest people in South Korea.
When he succeeded his father’s cosmetic business as its CEO in 1997, Suh rehauled Amorepacific with dozens of brands like Amore Pacific, Innisfree, Etude and Laneige. Today Amorepacific is worth US$4.7 billion and its boss has a fortune of US$1.6 billion, Forbes estimated.