Amancio Ortega, the founder of Inditex, the parent of Zara, is ranked No. 10 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $148 billion. He is one of the pioneers of fast fashion.
Amancio Ortega Gaona was born on March 28, 1936, in Busdongo de Arbas, in León, Spain, the youngest of four children of a railway worker. He grew up in Tolosa, in the Basque Country, and left school at the age of 14 to work in A Coruña.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 10, with $148 billion
- 2015 peak: for a brief time in 2015 he was the richest person in the world, overtaking Bill Gates when his fortune peaked at $80 billion, according to Wikipedia
From Shirt Shop to Zara
As a teenager Ortega worked in a shirtmaker’s shop called Gala in A Coruña and learned to make clothes by hand. In 1963 he founded Confecciones Goa to sell quilted bathrobes. In 1975 he opened the first Zara store with his then-wife, Rosalía Mera.
Inditex
- Brands: Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Pull&Bear, Oysho and Zara Home, among others
- Stock market listing: Inditex went public in 2001
- 2009 snapshot: he then owned 59.29% of the group, which had more than 6,000 stores and over 92,000 employees
- Retirement: in 2011 he announced he would hand over to Pablo Isla as head of the company
Ortega is famously private and has granted interviews to only three journalists, according to Wikipedia.
Property and Philanthropy
- Foundation: he set up the Amancio Ortega Foundation in 2001, focused on education and social welfare
- Charity: he gave about €20 million to Caritas in 2012 and €300 million to buy 440 cancer-detection machines for Spanish hospitals, a gift that some politicians criticised
- Real estate: he bought Madrid’s Torre Picasso skyscraper and the Epic Residences and Hotel in Miami
Why It Matters
Ortega’s fast-turnaround model, which brings new designs to stores in weeks, changed how clothes are made and sold, and Inditex remains one of the world’s largest fashion retailers.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Inditex’s headquarters at Arteixo, Spain (file photo; Amancio Ortega is not pictured). Photo: Nemigo / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
