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Alice Walton has long ranked among the world’s richest women, with a fortune exceeding $100 billion rooted in the family behind Walmart. The retailer is the No. 2 company on the Fortune 500, surpassed only this year by Amazon.

Between March 2025 and March 2026, her net worth climbed by $33 billion, according to Forbes. She is now worth nearly $120 billion, despite neither running Walmart nor serving on its board.

Walton, 76, is the youngest child of Walmart founder Sam Walton. She co manages Walton Enterprises, one of two family holding companies that control an estimated 39% to 44% of the retailer.

She is also estimated to own about 20 million Walmart shares directly in her name. At current figures cited in the source, that personal holding would be worth roughly $2.2 billion.

Most of her Walmart stake, however, is held indirectly through family entities. Walmart’s 2026 proxy statement shows Walton Enterprises directly holds about 3 billion shares and votes another 513 million shares held by the Walton Family Holdings Trust.

Because Walton’s fortune stems almost entirely from her inherited Walmart stake, gains in the company’s shares lift her net worth. Her brothers also hold significant shares in the retailer.

Walton’s career has included roles in retail and finance. After graduating from Trinity University in 1971, she briefly worked as a children’s clothing buyer at Walmart before becoming a stockbroker at E.F. Hutton and later running investment operations at Arvest, the family’s bank.

In 1988, Walton launched her own investment bank, Llama Co. The firm folded after the 1998 bond market crash, according to Bloomberg.

Her attention today is centered on medicine and philanthropy. In 2021, she founded the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark., her hometown and the location of Walmart’s headquarters, and donated $250 million to support the school.

The institution offers a four year medical program that grants degrees. It opened in 2025 with an initial class of 48 students and is waiving tuition for its first five cohorts, although students remain responsible for fees and living expenses.

“The real problem with health care is that there’s no incentive in the payment system for doctors to spend time helping you learn what good nutrition is, how important exercise is,” Walton told PBS NewsHour earlier this year. “And, frankly, doctors aren’t taught those things because they’re not paid for those things.”

The school added its second cohort this fall, lifting total enrollment to 96. Walton has described its approach as an effort to bring art and medicine together, saying, “I like the collision.”

Other billionaires have also committed major sums toward tuition free medical education. American educator Ruth Gottesman gave $1 billion in 2024 to make tuition free at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, while Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy provided $1 billion to cover tuition for most Johns Hopkins medical students.

Those donations supported established institutions, while Walton’s money helped create a new school. Her broader medical ambitions expanded again on Sept. 17, when the Alice L. Walton Foundation broke ground on a Bentonville health campus being built with the Mercy health system and Cleveland Clinic.

“I see innovation, technology, and research coming together to improve lives and address the critical issue of providing access for rural communities throughout the state and the region,” Walton said at the groundbreaking, according to Axios.

Her foundation is committing $350 million toward a hospital with 250 beds and a cancer center. The campus’s first building, a specialty care center focused on cardiac services, is scheduled to open in 2029.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.