Alice Walton

Alice Walton's record is unusual because it is measured in institutions rather than trophies. She founded and chairs Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which opened in 2011 and has become a cultural anchor for Northwest Arkansas. She funded the tuition-free Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, which welcomed its class of 2030, and in 2026 broke ground with Mercy on a $700 million hospital and cancer campus in Bentonville. She was inducted into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame in 2015 and is routinely ranked first among women on Forbes' and Bloomberg's billionaire lists.