Special Report
The 20 Richest Women In Entertainment
Lea Goldman and Kiri Blakeley 01.18.07, 6:00 AM ET
![]() To compile the list, we scoured the music, television, film and publishing industries to determine which female celebrities have, over the course of their careers, amassed the greatest fortunes in entertainment. We ruled out non-working celebs who essentially live off royalties (Barbra Streisand, for example), and we also excluded "old Hollywood" types like Elizabeth Taylor. The list is entirely confined to today's active megastars. In Pictures: The 20 Richest Women In Entertainment Of course, the celebrities with the longest careers proved the most daunting to evaluate. Since beginning her career in the early 1980s, Madonna has sold some 200 million albums worldwide and starred in a string of largely disappointing films. She owns an impressive portfolio of properties and briefly ran her own record label, Maverick, a part of Warner Music Group. Our estimate of her net worth--$325 million--is definitely on the conservative side. Indeed, most of the women on our list cull their earnings from multimedia enterprises. Jennifer Lopez, for example, boasts valuable perfume and fashion lines in addition to her film and music careers; Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling now enjoys millions of dollars in royalties and merchandising revenues from the incredibly successful film adaptations of her books; and supermodel Gisele Bundchen, a fixture of Victoria's Secret catalogs, earned her $70 million fortune not just from modeling, but also from a line of successful sandals sold in Brazil. Britney Spears, 25, also makes the list, despite a relatively brief career that took off only in 1999 with the release of her hit single "...Baby one More Time." Her $100 million fortune was earned largely from music--she has sold over 75 million albums to date--but she has supplemented her income with a profitable line of perfumes and multimillion-dollar endorsement deals. The richest actress on the list is Julia Roberts, who built her estimated $140 million fortune film by film. The Pretty Woman star was the first actress in Hollywood to command a $20 million-per-film paycheck, a fairly common salary for male superstars like Will Smith and Johnny Depp. Other actresses who make the list largely due to their film fees are Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz. Sandra Bullock, who checks in at No. 14 on the list, supplemented movie earnings by producing the ABC sitcom The George Lopez Show, which went into syndication last year. Martha Stewart is the only woman on the list whose net worth fluctuates just about every second. Her nearly $650 million fortune is based almost entirely on the 28 million shares she owns in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (nyse: MSO - news - people ). (In 2005, that stake was worth $1 billion.) Though her brief stint in prison forced her to relinquish the chief executive title, she still collects upwards of $2 million a year in salary and bonuses from the firm. Forbes' list of the 20 Richest Women in Entertainment is the subject of a one-hour special slated to air on the E! Entertainment Channel on Jan. 20. Check your local listings. In Pictures: The 20 Richest Women In Entertainment Methodology: Net worth estimates were arrived at by tallying the total earnings, including salaries, record sales, tours, merchandising and royalties over the course of a career. When relevant, we included real estate holdings, shares and other assets. A conservative rate of return was applied, less taxes and agent fees. The list is limited to those female celebrities active in their professional lives. |
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![]() 1. Oprah Winfrey 2. J.K. Rowling 3. Martha Stewart 4. Madonna 5. Celine Dion 6. Mariah Carey 7. Janet Jackson 8. Julia Roberts 9. Jennifer Lopez 10. Jennifer Aniston 11. The Olsen Twins 12. Britney Spears 13. Judge Judy 14. Sandra Bullock 15. Cameron Diaz 16. Gisele Bundchen 17. Ellen DeGeneres 18. Nicole Kidman 19. Christina Aguilera 20. Renee Zellweger See Also![]() ![]() ![]() |