French Gates is a co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic venture that has granted more than $50 billion. The Seattle-based foundation was set-up with proceeds from Microsoft, the world's biggest software company founded by her former husband. The pair announced their divorce in May 2021.
Melinda French Gates's net worth of $11.2B can buy ...
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About half of French Gates's wealth is derived from public holdings transferred to her in May and August 2021, following her divorce from the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates.
These shares were previously held by Cascade Investments, Bill Gates's holding company, according to company filings, and represented about 9% of the value of Cascade Investments' total public holdings, according to Bloomberg's calculations.
It's assumed in this analysis that the same proportion of Cascade's closely held assets were also transferred to French Gates in the divorce. The full terms of the divorce are not known and changes to the net worth calculation are likely to occur if more details on asset transfers emerge.
A representative for French Gates declined to comment on her net worth in October 2021.
Melinda Gates, formerly French, was born on Aug. 15, 1964. She was raised in Dallas, Texas and completed a computer science/economics degree and MBA from Duke University.
She was working at Microsoft as a product manager when she met the company's founder Bill Gates. They married in 1994.
In 1996, she left the company before co-founding the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The group has granted more than $54 billion to humanitarian causes in the U.S. and developing countries.
She lives in Seattle and has three children.