Top 10 richest heirs in the world 2025: The only Indian on the list turned his $2.8 bn inheritance into $200 bn empire

Top 10 rich heir of the world 2025: Most parents will find the biggest thing that they may have wished to accord their children is a car or a college education. However, in the field of the hyper-rich, most purses are stuffed with multi-billion-dollar empires.

Approximately 36 percent of 3, 028 billionaires that appeared in The World Billionaires List of Forbes 2024 inherited some of it. All these 990 male descendants of the billionaire club boast a fortune of a whopping $5.3 trillion -a lot more than $56 billion in a year. Their overall wealth has increased, but they occupy a slightly smaller percentile of members on the list (33 per cent, previously 34 per cent) because new self-made billionaires keep cropping up.

On top of the list are the three heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton – Rob, Jim and Alice who inherited their share of the retail giant and chose their different ways. All of them are currently valued at more than a 100 billion dollars. Rob and Jim were longstanding members of the company board whereas Alice was more concerned about charitable contributions and arts. The Walton family together with other family members owns close to 45 per cent of Walmart.

Sixty per cent of the heirs on this year list are actively growing their fortunes either by managing inherited companies or starting new companies. A good example is India, whose richest person is Mukesh Ambani worth $92.5 billion. On the death of his father in 2002, Ambani got a 2.8-billion share in Reliance Industries. He has since expanded it to a 200-billion empire touching on petrochemicals, telecommunication and retail business.

The heirs also happen to be younger in age- all of the 14 youngest billionaires inherited their money. And the youngest one Johannes von Baumbach (19) was worth an equivalent of ( 5.4 billion) via its shareholding in German drug giant Boehringer Ingelheim.

Top 10 richest billionaire heirs

10. Dieter Schwarz -$41 Billion

One of the most reclusive, yet successful, business magnates in Germany is Dieter Schwarz who is aged 85 years. He is the actual owner and ex-CEO of the Schwarz group the holding company that owns the retailers Lidl and Kaufland which are giant retailers. Schwarz entered the family business with his father Josef Schwarz who had initially taken a fruit wholesaling outfit and expanded it to be a general retail store.

Dieter actually managed to open the first Lidl store way back in 1973 and the rest is history since then as it has grown into one of the biggest supermarket chains in Europe. The Schwarz Group has grown since then vigorously. Currently, it is an industry that makes more than 160 billion dollars yearly. Despite his wealth and stature in the retail industry, Schwarz is well known to have one of the lowest profiles by comparison in the public eye, hardly doing interviews and making few, if any, public appearances at all.

8. John Mars & Jacqueline Mars -$42.6 billion (It is equal)

John Mars and his sister Jacqueline Mars were born in the United States of America to the famous family-owned company with well-loved brands, such as M&M, Snickers, and Pedigree pet food, Mars, Incorporated. Both of the siblings have a net worth of about $42.6 billion as a result of inheriting the one-third interest they had in the business started by their grandfather in 1911, Frank Mars. John and Jacqueline aided Mars to become a diversified global empire together with his late brother Forrest Jr. John and Forrest Jr. worked as co-presidents since 1975.

The management of the company achieved significant growth into the realm of chewing gum and pet care. Jacqueline served in the company close to 20 years and resigned in 2001 and continued being a member of the board until 2016. As a celebrity known to be involved in the equestrian industry, Jacqueline has been able to allocate a lot of her fortune in charity activities.

7. Charles Koch & Family – $ 67.5 Billion

At the age of 89, Charles Koch succeeded his late father Fred Koch in oil refining and engineering company in Wichita, Kansas, in 1967. He evolved it to Koch, Inc. (previously, Koch Industries), one of the biggest privately owned companies in the United States, with its annual revenue expected to hit the 125 billion dollar mark.

The giant conglomerate has expanded to include anything as cloud software to fertilizer. Charles Koch is an avid promoter of free-market capitalism with his wealth, invested into a variety of libertarian and conservative actions. Between 2020 and 2022, he gave away 5.3 billion in nonvoting stock to two nonprofits that support a broader political role than traditional charities, moving just short of 10 per cent of his 42 per cent interest in the company.

6. Julia Koch & Family -74.2 billion

Julia Koch has a net worth of $74.2 billion, and she is among the richest women in the world at the age of 62. Her three children together with her inherited the 42 per cent share in Koch, Inc. when her husband David Koch passed away in 2019- brother to Charles Koch. Julia has also been doing business and philanthropy as she is based in New York.

In 2024, she and her children jointly invested about 700 million dollars to attain a 15 per cent share in BSE Global which owns the Brooklyn nets basketball team in the NBA and New York Liberty in the Women basketball league. She similarly gave 75 million dollars last year through her Julia Koch Family Foundation to endow the Julia Koch Family Ambulatory Care Center at NYU Langone in West Palm Beach. Koch is a board member in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a director in Koch, Inc., he still wields power over one of the biggest privately owned enterprises in America.

5. Francoise Bettencourt meyers Family- $81.6 Billion

Franoise Bettencourt Meyers (71) is one of the rarest and highly privileged heirs in existence, courtesy of the leading shareholding in France powder and make-up giant, L Oreal by her family, even before the young French woman first learnt to read or write.

The Bettencourt Meyers family maintain more than a third of the company. In June, she was briefly the first-ever female to become worth over the 100 billion dollars threshold. She stopped serving on the board of LOral in February 2025 but her legacy is strongly associated with the success of the company. Francoise has been the wealthiest woman in the world over two years before she was overtaken by Alice Walton who is the heiress to Walmart in September.

4. Mukesh Ambani -$92.5 Billion

Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in India at the age of 67 and he has a net worth of 92.5 billion. After the death of his father, the legendary industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani, in the year 2002, he and his younger brother Anil succeeded his father to take over the reins of the vast Reliance empire. Nevertheless, their legacy was not long when it emerged as an issue of conflict that led to the division of the family business.

Although Anil went down with the ship having fallen heavily into debt and losing his business, Mukesh manages to build Reliance Industries into a huge business group covering oil, petrochemicals, retail, and telecom thus establishing himself as the richest man in Asia.

3. Alice Walton- $101 Billion
4. Jim Walton & family- $109 Billion
5. Rob Walton & family- $110 Billion

Rob, Jim and Alice Walton, the three surviving offspring of Walmart founder Sam Walton, own about 34 per cent of shares of the corporation and are on the list of top-wealthy people in the world. Rob Walton, the eldest brother, served on the Walmart board of directors in an essential role and served as its chairman of the board even after over 40 years; he stepped down in 2024.

The youngest, Jim Walton, retired to the board in 2016 and is now busy leading a family business, the Arvest Bank Group, one of the prominent regional banks. Alternatively, Alice Walton has been busy about her philanthropy and art work and has given approximately 1.7 billions of dollars to the various causes including education, environmental causes, and her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas in which she opened the famous Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Source: Forbes

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