The 31 richest women in Britain

Most of Britain’s richest women derived their wealth through inheritance and marriage.

However, some of the 20 female billionaires and dozens of female multi-millionaires, racked up their riches founding their own companies or being successful in their own right, according to the Sunday Times’ 2017 Rich List published this week.

For example, Bet365 founder Denise Coates racked up an enormous fortune from a gambling empire she created. She is the 22nd richest person in Britain and 5th richest woman in UK with a net worth of £5 billion.

But there are very few that can claim to be truly self-made.

Business Insider decided to take a quick look to see who made the top spots.

31. Lady de Rothschild: Net worth — £675 million ($875.5 million). Lynn de Rothschild owns EL Rothschild, a family investment operation, with husband Evelyn de Rothschild, and can thank him for most of her wealth.

30. May Makhzoumi: Net worth — £700 million ($908.02 million). The wife of Lebanese industrialist Fouad Makhzou gets most of her wealth from her husband. He founded Dubai-based company Future Pipe which makes fibreglass pipes for large infrastructure projects.

29. Ruth Parasol: Net worth — £720 million ($934.03 million). Gibraltar-based Parasol and her former husband Russ DeLeon derived their joint fortune through the launch of Starluck Casino and Partygaming. Partygaming is the parent company of PartyPoker.com.

28. Patricia Thompson: Net worth — £730 million ($947.1 million). Thompson runs Newmarket's Cheveley Park Stud which is owned by her husband, a former Smithfield meat trader who made millions from selling the Hillsdown food group. She also runs food and retailing firms.

27. Slavica Ecclestone: Net worth — £740 million ($960.83 million). The former Armani model, pictured to the left with her daughter Tamara, was married to F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone for 24 years. However, considering her former husband is worth £2.7 billion, it comes as no surprise that her huge divorce settlement accounts for nearly all her wealth.

26. Princess Gesine Doria Pamphilj: Net worth — £750 million ($973.8 million). Princess Gesine and Prince Jonathan were adopted by an Italian noble family and in turn inherited a vast amount of wealth. Their inheritance includes an enormous art collection.

25. Nichola Pease: Net worth — £775 million ($1 billion). Fund manager Pease made £26 million when she sold her stake in JO Hambro Capital Management, but a chunk of her fortune comes from her husband Crispin Odey, who is the controlling shareholder in hedge fund Odey Asset Management. They both lost £125 million post Brexit vote.

24. Nancy Shevell: Net worth — £780 million ($1.01 billion). Shevell married Beatles singer Paul McCartney in 2011 and her wealth has boomed since then. While she brought £150 million to the relationship, from her share of her father's US trucking operation, McCartney is the major source of her wealth.

23. Yelena Baturina: Net worth — £822 million ($1.06 billion). Baturina is Russia's richest woman but she now lives in London. The self-made oligarch started out in the computer software and hardware industries until funding her own plastics business, Inteco, in Russia.

22. Mireille Gillings: Net worth — £900 million ($1.16 billion). She owns a £706 million stake in Nasdaq-listed pharmaceuticals research company Quintiles with her husband Dennis, who founded the company in 1982. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Radboud University, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

21. Ann Gloag: Net worth — £920 million ($1.19 billion). She is a shareholder in the transport company Stagecoach, which she and her brother Sir Brian Souter cofounded. The family stake is worth £312 million in total.

20. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Net worth — £1.15 billion ($1.49 billion). She founded biotech and pharmaceutical company Biocon, which was sold to Unilever, then again to ICI. She and John Shaw — now her husband — chair the business, and Shaw sits on the board after he bought it back in 1998.

19. Varsha Engineer: Net worth — £1.2 billion ($1.55 billion). Varsha and her husband Navin jointly run the Surrey-based pharmaceuticals group Chemidex, which is worth around £1.1 billion.

18. Christina Ong: Net worth — £1.296 billion ($1.68 billion). Ong is known as "the Queen of Bond Street" because of the designer franchises she owns there through the Club 21 group. The Sunday Times says: "She comes from old money: daddy was a multimillionaire and she married Ong Beng Seng, a billionaire property magnate whose Singapore-based Hotel Properties operates brands including Hilton, InterContinental and Four Seasons."

17. Emily von Opel: Net worth — £1.416 billion ($1.836 billion). She is married to Georg who is the great-grandson of German car brand founder Adam Opel. Her wealth comes from her husband, who owns Swiss-based holding company Hansa which has £1.416 billion of assets.

16. Mary Haughey, Lady Ballyedmond: Net worth — £1.42 billion ($1.84 billion). Lady Mary mainly derived her wealth from late husband Lord Ballyedmond, who died in a helicopter crash in 2014. She is now the deputy chairman of the family's Norbrook Laboratories, which is worth £1 billion. Despite being the richest person in Northern Ireland, photos of her are hard to come by.

15. Anita Zabludowicz: Net worth — £1.5 billion ($1.94 billion). Anita and her husband Poju Zabludowicz are world famous art collectors with their 3,000-strong Zabludowicz Collection in London. Meanwhile, Poju's wealth comes through property and hotels. Only four years ago, he sold the family's British Israel Property operation for £484 million.

14. Princess Marie-Chantal and family: Net worth — £1.58 billion ($2.05 billion). Crown Princess Marie-Chantal is rich because her father Robert Miller made his fortune through cofounding the Hong Kong-based Duty Free Shoppers chain in 1960. She then married Pavlos, the son of former King Constantine II of Greece, who was deposed in 1973.

13. Dame Mary Perkins: Net worth — £1.6 billion ($2 billion). Her and her husband Douglas own 50% each of the giant opticians chain they founded, Specsavers. Perkins and her husband Douglas met at Cardiff University.

12. Marit Mohn Westlake: Net worth — £1.62 billion ($2.1 billion). Her wealth is one of Norway's leading industrial fortunes. Her family sold Framo, the maker of cargo pumps for tankers, to Sweden's Alfa Laval for £1.1 billion in 2014.

11. Sarah Dawson: Net worth — £1.9 billion ($2.46 billion). Dawson's wealth is derived from her husband Chris. He is a self-made retail billionaire who founded The Range, which stocks everything from lawnmowers to sketchpads.

10. Harriet Heyman: Net worth — £2.629 billion ($3.411 billion). Heyman can largely thank her husband Michael Moritz for her wealth. He's the chairman of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and was an early investor in Google, PayPal and Yahoo.

9. Lady Tina Green: Net worth — £2.787 billion ($3.616 billion). Lady Tina is married to high street fashion magnate Philip Green. The Green family has stakes in Arcadia, which includes major British brands like Topshop. Tina's husband also owns £1.6 billion worth of property and yachts and other financial assets. Her and Philip lost £433 million last year after the BHS pensions scandal.

8. Salma Hayek: Net worth — £3.437 billion ($4.45 billion). She's a successful Hollywood actress in her own right, with a personal net worth of £64 million, and earns £12 million a year in film work alone. However, her total wealth is largely down to her marriage to London-based François-Henri Pinault, who is the CEO of the second-largest French luxury group Kering, which was founded by his father.

7. Baroness Howard de Walden: Net worth — £3.73 billion ($4.84 billion). The eldest of four daughters of the late Lord Howard de Walden leads the family's property empire and added £100 million onto her fortune last year.

6. Lady Charlotte Wellesley: Net worth — £3.8 billion ($4.99 billion). The 26-year-old's wealth largely derives from being married to Alejandro Santo Domingo in 2016. Domingo is a 40-year-old Colombian-American billionaire and Lady Charlotte is the Duke of Wellington's daughter.

5. Denise Coates: Net worth — £5 billion ($6.48 billion). She is Britain's richest self-made woman thanks to turning her small betting shop into the world's largest online gambling company — Bet365.

4. Carrie Perrodo — £5.176 billion ($6.71 billion). Carrie is the widow of the late Hubert Perrodo, who founded the Franco-British oil company Perenco. When he died in an Alpine climbing accident in 2006, Carrie and her eldest son, Francois, took control of the company.

3. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken: Net worth — £9.3 billion ($12.06 billion). She inherited 25% of the drinks company Heineken. She once said, "I lived off [my husband's] salary and his bonus in his house." Her husband Michel remains as a director in Heineken.

2. Kirsten Rausing: Net worth — £9.66 billion ($12.53 billion). She is a leading shareholder in Swiss-based packaging behemoth Tetra Laval. She is one of the three children of the late Gad Rausing, pictured here in the middle in an undated photo.

1. Kirsty Bertarelli: Net worth — £11.5 billion ($14.92 billion). Bertarelli, a singer, married the richest man in Switzerland. Her wealth is more than the Queen and "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling combined. Her husband Ernesto inherited biotech giant Serono from his father and then sold it in 2007 for £6.2 billion.