Miriam Adelson and her family are ranked No. 56 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $37.5 billion. A physician by training, she is the widow of Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson and one of the largest Republican donors in the United States.
Miriam Adelson (née Farbstein) was born on October 10, 1945, in Tel Aviv, then in Mandatory Palestine, to parents who had fled Poland before the Holocaust. Her family settled in Haifa in the 1950s, where her father owned several cinemas. She attended the Hebrew Reali School for 12 years.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 56, with $37.5 billion, listed as “Miriam Adelson & family”
- Holdings: Las Vegas Sands and the Dallas Mavericks, among others, according to Wikipedia
Medical Career
Adelson earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a medical degree, magna cum laude, from the Tel Aviv University medical school. She served as a medical officer in the army and became chief internist in the emergency room at Tel Aviv’s Rokach Hospital. In 1986 she went to Rockefeller University as an associate physician specialising in drug addiction.
Business and Media
- Marriage: she was married to Sheldon Adelson until his death in 2021; earlier she was married to the physician Ariel Ochshorn, and they had two daughters
- Newspapers: she is the publisher of the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom and, with her family, owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal
Politics
Since the 2010s she has been one of the Republican Party’s largest individual donors, and since 2016 one of Donald Trump’s most prominent financial supporters. She was the third-largest donor to his 2024 campaign, giving $106 million, according to Wikipedia. She has consistently urged US pro-Israel policies. President Trump awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
Why It Matters
Adelson’s fortune comes mainly from Las Vegas Sands, and her donations have made her one of the most influential private donors in American politics.
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: Miriam Adelson at an event in October 2023. Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
