Shares of L’Oreal rose sharply on Thursday, boosting company heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers’ net worth by more than $6 billion, after the cosmetics giant beat analyst expectations and reported a 7.6% increase in sales in the first quarter of this year.
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the second richest woman in the world.
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After markets opened in Europe, L’Oreal’s share price rose 8.21% to €373.20 ($436.40).
According to Forbes’ estimates, the stock surge added $6.1 billion to Bettencourt Meyers net worth, which now stands at $94.4 billion.
The boost in her fortune pushed the French billionaire into the 20th spot on Forbes’s real-time list of the world's richest people, as she displaced Asia’s richest person Mukesh Ambani from the spot.
Bettencourt Meyers is the second-richest woman in the world, behind only Walmart heiress and Philanthropist Alice Walton, whose fortune is estimated at $136 billion.
Bettencourt Meyers retired from L’Oreal’s board last year and gave her vice chairmanship to her son, Jean-Victor Meyers.
The world’s largest cosmetics brand reported sales of €12.15 billion ($14.2 billion) in the first quarter of 2026, up 7.6% from the same period last year when adjusted on a like-for-like basis. This handily beat analyst estimates of around 3-4% sales growth. The company said the recovery it saw in the second half of 2025 in its two largest markets, the US and China, continued in the most recent quarter, and it “outpaced the market in both.”
The boost in L’Oreal’s sales comes on the backdrop of other European luxury brands like LVMH, Hermes and Gucci’s parent Kering reporting that sales in the Middle East region have been hit by the Iran war. LVMH said the war had cut at least 1% of the group’s total sales in the first quarter due to a drop in spending in the Gulf and a tourism slump in Europe. LVHM CEO and Chair Bernard Arnault, the richest person in Europe, has seen his fortune fall from $171 billion at the start of this year to $148 billion on Thursday, due to a slump in LVHM’s stock price.
LVMH Founder Bernard Arnault’s Fortune Falls $50 Billion This Year (Forbes)
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