Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is ranked No. 14 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $134 billion. She is the richest woman in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index cited by Wikipedia.
Alice Louise Walton was born on October 7, 1949, in Newport, Arkansas, and raised in Bentonville with her three brothers. She graduated from Bentonville High School in 1966 and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 14, with $134 billion
- Source of wealth: her inheritance of Walmart shares
Finance and Civic Work
Early in her career Walton was an equity analyst and money manager for First Commerce Corporation, headed investment activities at Arvest Bank Group and worked as a broker for E. F. Hutton. In 1988 she founded the investment bank Llama Company, which closed in 1998. She was the first chair of the Northwest Arkansas Council and played a major role in building the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, which opened in 1998. She gave $15 million toward construction and her firm underwrote a $79.5 million bond; the terminal is named after her.
Art Collector
- 2004–2005: she bought art from the Fraad collection at Sotheby’s and Asher B. Durand’s painting Kindred Spirits, for a reported $35 million
- 2009: she bought Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter for $4.9 million
- Museum: she assembled her collection for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas
Why It Matters
Alice Walton’s fortune comes from the retailer her father founded, and she has used part of it to build cultural institutions in Northwest Arkansas.
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: The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, founded by Alice Walton (file photo; she is not pictured). Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
