How Walmart heiress Alice Walton, the world's richest woman, spends her $101 billion fortune

Alice Walton, the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the world's richest woman.

Walton and L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers regularly alternate in the #1 spot; Walton passed Bettencourt Meyers in recent months.

Unlike her brothers, Rob and Jim, Alice Walton has never taken an active role in running Walmart and has instead become a patron of the arts.

Walton fell in love with the arts at a young age, according to a New Yorker profile. When she was 10, she bought her first work of art: a reproduction of a Picasso painting for $2, she told the publication.

After graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1971, Walton briefly entered the family business, working for Walmart as a buyer of children's clothes, she told The New Yorker.

But her career really began in finance, which led her to founding Llama Company, an investment bank, in 1988.

She has been married and divorced twice and has no children.

Walton has an immense private art collection, with original works from legendary American artists including Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, and Georgia O'Keefe.

"Collecting has been such a joy, and such an important part of my life in terms of seeing art, and loving it," she told The New Yorker.

In 2011, she opened a $50 million museum called Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, to house her $500 million private art collection.

Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville. When the museum opened, it had four times the endowment of the famous Whitney Museum in New York.

In 2014, the Walmart heiress dropped $44.4 million on a piece of artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe.

It was the most expensive sale of a work of art by a female artist in history. Walton later put it on display at her museum in Arkansas.

Walton has donated millions to the arts and other causes.

In January 2016, Walton donated 3.7 million of her own Walmart shares — worth about $225 million at the time — to the family's nonprofit, the Walton Family Foundation, Fortune reported. The next year, the charity gifted $120 million to the University of Arkansas to establish a School of Art.

She used to sit on the foundation's board of directors alongside four other Waltons.

Walton also has her own charitable organization, the Alice L. Walton Foundation, which donates to causes including the arts, education, and health, according to its website.

Walton has also put some of her money into politics.

She has traditionally given to Republican candidates and PACs, though Walton donated $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee supporting Clinton and other Democrats, in 2016, according to Forbes.

The two women met while Clinton was serving as First Lady of Arkansas and was the only woman sitting on Walmart's board.

Walton has been active in the horse breeding scene in Texas, but in 2015 she said she was going to devote more of her time to her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

"I've been stretched in too many directions and I want to get focused," Walton said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2017. "I've got a house in Fort Worth, so I'm moving to town."

In 2017, she sold her Millsap, Texas ranch for an undisclosed amount. The Rocking W Ranch had an initial asking price of $19.75 million but was later reduced to $16.5 million. The working ranch boasted more than 250 acres of pasture and outbuildings for cattle and horses.

She'd also put another Texas ranch, the 4,416-acre Fortune Bend Ranch, on the market around the same time.

She also cut its listing price, to $22.1 million. The property has a modest three-bedroom home overlooking nearly five miles of river frontage.

Walton also bought a two-floor condo on New York City's Park Avenue for $25 million in 2014.

The condo, which had been owned by late financier Christopher H. Browne, has more than 52 large windows overlooking Central Park and the city, as well as a media room and a library.

In 2015, protesters gathered outside Walton's building to demand a $15 minimum wage for Walmart employees. In 2023, the median wage for workers at Walmart, the world's largest private employer, was $27,642.

In 2021, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine was founded.

It received preliminary accreditation status from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in 2024, allowing it to start recruiting students.

"I'm so proud of the work the entire team at AWSOM has accomplished to reach preliminary accreditation status," Walton said in a press release at the time. "The School of Medicine will play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of physicians, equipping them to care for the whole person and making a lasting impact on health care in the Heartland and beyond."

Its inaugural class will have 48 students, with classes starting in 2025. The nonprofit school will waive tuition for its first five cohorts of students.

It aims to "enhance traditional medical education with the arts, humanities, and whole health principles," its website says. It shares the same campus as the Crystal Bridges museum.

Katie Warren and Tanza Loudenback contributed to an earlier version of this story.