Some in Forbes’ new ranking of America’s 100 richest self-made women are household names — think Oprah Winfrey, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift.
Others are stalwarts in their industries who stay out of the glare of the public spotlight — like building supplies queen Diane Hendricks, who is No. 1 in this year’s ranking, or semiconductor company CEO and Austin resident Lisa Su.
Su is one of a dozen Texas women earning spots on this year’s list. But topping the Texas representatives is fellow technology leader Thai Lee, 64, of Austin.
Forbes pegs Lee’s net worth at $4.8 billion — making her the fifth-richest self-made woman in the U.S. this year. Lee and her ex-husband paid less than $1 million in 1989 for a software reseller and grew the company into an IT behemoth. SHI International boasts more than 15,000 customers, including giants Boeing and Dallas-based AT&T, and recorded sales of $14 billion. It describes itself as the largest minority- and woman-owned business in the U.S.
Trailing Lee among Texans is Gwynne Shotwell, 59, of Jonesboro. She runs the operations of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, where she’s president and chief operating officer. Forbes said her stake in SpaceX is less than 1%, giving her a net worth of $860 million.
Three Dallas-Fort Worth self-made women made the list.
Robyn Jones, 60, of Westlake co-founded Westlake-based Goosehead Insurance, where she serves as vice chair. She started a property and casualty insurance agency in 2003, and her husband, Mark, left a consulting gig at Bain a year later to join her. He’s the company’s chairman and CEO. Goosehead went public in 2018.
Her net worth was estimated at $830 million.
April Anthony, 56, of Dallas checks in next with an estimated net worth of $740 million, which ties her and Su with Taylor Swift for 34th nationally.
The home health care veteran founded her first company at age 25, sold it five years later and started Encompass Home Health & Hospice, which Health South bought for $750 million in 2015. She also started enterprise software provider Homecare Homebase, bought by Hearst at a valuation of $625 million in 2013. She’s now CEO of VitalCaring, another home health and hospice care firm.
Ranking 44th nationally was Kathleen Hildreth, 61, of Aubrey. The company she co-founded in 2003, M1 Support Services, maintains military aircraft for the U.S. government. She’s a service-disabled Army veteran and helicopter pilot.
Hildreth’s net worth was estimated at $590 million.
Other Texas women on the list include:
- Kendra Scott, 49, of Austin, $550 million. She founded her namesake jewelry company in a spare bedroom in her home in 2002. It now has over 100 stores and achieved a $1 billion valuation in 2016 when private equity firm Berkshire Partners bought in. Scott serves as executive chair.
- Whitney Wolfe Herd, 33, of Austin, $510 million. The Southern Methodist University graduate co-founded dating app Bumble in 2014 with Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, who sold his stake to private equity firm Blackstone in 2019. Bumble went public two years later, with Wolfe Herd maintaining a 17% stake in the company. She also was a co-founder of Dallas-based Match Group’s Tinder dating app. She later sued the company, alleging sexual harassment, and won a settlement that helped her establish Bumble. She serves as CEO of Bumble Inc., which operates two dating apps: Bumble and Badoo.
- Paige Mycoskie, 43, of Austin, $380 million. The designer came up with her 1970s-inspired lifestyle brand, Aviator Nation, while working in a surf shop along California’s famed Venice Beach. The company took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, with sales hitting $130 million last year. The fashion line is known for $160 smiley face sweatpants and $190 striped hoodies, which Mycoskie sketched.
- Iman Abuzeid, 38, of Austin, $350 million. She co-founded health care staffing firm Incredible Health in 2017 to address the nation’s nursing shortage. It matches nurse profiles with open hospital positions in the U.S. She is one of only a handful of Black female founders to run a company valued at more than $1 billion.
- Julia Cheek, 39, of Austin, $260 million. The Dallas native founded at-home testing company Everly Health in 2015 and gained a boost when she landed a Shark Tank investment from Lori Greiner. Forbes estimated the firm was now worth about $1.8 billion. Everly Health, which sells about 30 health and wellness tests online and in stores like CVS and Rite Aid, had revenue of $250 million in 2022.
- Belinda Johnson, 56, of Austin, $250 million. She became Airbnb’s chief operating officer after joining the company in 2011 as its first executive hire. Before that, she was general counsel at Mark Cuban’s startup Broadcast.com, which was sold to Yahoo! in 1998. Her father-in-law is former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson.
