INTERNATIONAL: Germany has the third highest number of female billionaires in the world, trailing behind only the US and China, according to the international student information portal Study-in-Germany.org.
As of 2024, the country boasts 35 female billionaires. However, what’s surprising about these women is that 37.5% of them studied arts and humanities, not business or economics, which are the common educational backgrounds of male billionaires in Germany.
Data from the study revealed that nearly half (45.7%) of the country’s female billionaires hold university degrees, with 62.5% of them having attended public universities in Germany.
The rest either did not attend university or have no publicly available information about their academic background.
The most notable female billionaires in Germany include:
- Susanne Klatten (US$26.5 billion): University of Buckingham and IMD Business School, MBA
- Anna Katharina Viessmann (US$3.6 billion): University of Passau, International Cultural and Business Studies
- Karin Sartorius-Herbst (US$3.4 billion): University of Göttingen, Economics
- Katharina Otto-Bernstein (US$3.1 billion): Columbia University, MFA in Film
- Julia Thiele-Schürhoff (US$3 billion): Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Law
- Yvonne Bauer (US$2.3 billion): University of Bamberg, German philology
- Regine Leibinger (US$1.9 billion): Technical University of Berlin, Harvard University (Architecture)
- Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller (US$1.9 billion): University of Freiburg, University of Vermont, and ETH Zurich, German, English, and Japanese
Although Germany ranks third globally for the number of women billionaires, only 3.12% of these women are self-made billionaires, while 38.03% inherited their wealth. /TISG
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