These Are The Richest Women In American History

From grit and enterprise to inheritance and reinvention, these are the women who have quietly shaped the nation’s economy and redefined what financial power can look like.

1. Diane Hendricks

Net worth (2025): approx. US$22.3 billion.
From a dairy‐farm upbringing in Wisconsin to chairing one of America’s largest wholesale building-supply businesses, Diane Hendricks is widely recognised as the richest self-made woman in the United States. She co-founded ABC Supply in 1982 with her late husband, and after his passing in 2007 she took the reins, oversaw major acquisitions and expanded the company’s footprint nationwide.

What stands out: A modest rural start, and turning building materials into a multibillion-dollar business without the typical “tech unicorn” story.