How the richest woman in the world is a piano playing recluse who pens books about the Bible… After the L’Oreal heiress sees her fortune swell to $100 billion

Outwardly, there is very little that stands out about the heiress to the L'Oréal beauty giant, who just became the first woman to amass a $100 billion fortune.

The family business owns brands such as Prada and Yves Saint Laurent, but also Lancome. But French businesswoman Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, granddaughter of the founder of L'Oréal and now the richest woman in the world, has a more subdued style.

The 70-year-old's favorite accessories are large glasses with thick frames and a brightly colored scarf, usually worn with a practical pantsuit. Apart from a layer of black eyeliner, she wears little make-up, and when not dealing with business matters, she writes books.

No glamorous, escapist fiction, but heavy books, including five volumes of A Look At The Bible and another tackling Greek mythology.

She does, however, have one notable indulgence: two grand pianos, a Steinway and a Yamaha, which take pride of place in her elegant two-story apartment in the wealthy Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

It seems the piano has been a lifelong outlet for this low-profile member of the small group of individuals who can truly call themselves mega-rich (her $100.2 billion fortune places her 12th on Bloomberg's Billionaire Index).

Francoise started playing as a child and was taught by Yvonne Lefebure – a woman who counted the composers Faure and Ravel among her friends – at the exclusive Marymount School in Paris, run by American nuns.

She reached the $100 billion milestone after shares in the company, founded by her grandfather Eugene Schueller in 1909, reached an all-time high. But her status as the world's richest woman was inherited from her mother Liliane Bettencourt, the glamorous grand dame of the beauty conglomerate, who died in 2017 at the age of 94.

However inconspicuous Françoise would like to remain, Liliane's death closed a chapter in Bettencourt's history that could rival TV's succession for rivalry, infighting and drama.

What started as a family feud over love and money and the vulnerability of an aging matriarch developed into an explosive feud that made headlines and culminated in a political scandal, with accusations of tax evasion and illegal donations to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

A three-part Netflix documentary was recently released about the 'Bettencourt affair' (which was so seismic that it was given its own name).

So what's the background of the woman who just became a billionaire a hundred times over?

The story of Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is marked by the long shadow of her mother Liliane, who had a strong bond with her own father, a chemist who started his business producing and selling synthetic hair dyes to Parisian salons.

Her mother died when she was five, and Liliane first started working for L'Oréal at the age of 15, putting labels on shampoo bottles in a factory.

She inherited the L'Oréal empire when her father died in 1957, but running the company fell to one man, the company's CEO Francois Dalle, and for most of Liliane's ninety years she was better known for who she was rather than what she did.

Married to Andre Bettencourt, a minister in the 1960s and 1970s under President Charles de Gaulle, Liliane led a life of luxury. She even bought an island in the Seychelles.

Francoise, an only child, was born in 1953, but the mother-daughter relationship was strained from the start, when Liliane contracted tuberculosis and had to leave her daughter behind while she recovered in a sanatorium.

Later, little Francoise was taken out of school and educated at home, as her parents were plagued by fears that she would be kidnapped and held to ransom. Her piano was a comfort.

On her preference for solitude over glitzy parties, she said: 'I have always enjoyed moments shared by friends, in small groups, that's how the best friendships are created. I still don't like big dinners, I prefer cozy brunches.'

In his 2017 book The Bettencourt Affair, journalist Tom Sancton reflects that Francoise was never comfortable with her status as an heiress and rich girl, and could not have been less like her enthusiastic socialite mother. However, she has always maintained that they were once a “close family.”

Sancton's book quotes childhood friend Arielle Dombasle: 'Francoise doesn't like luxury. She loves her Labrador. She adores her children and she loves her husband.”

Born and raised as a Catholic, Francoise met the man who would become her husband at the age of 19. Jean Pierre-Meyers was five years older, the son of a L'Oréal manager, from a wealthy French-Jewish banking family.

The couple opted for a low-key wedding in Tuscany, Italy, with just nine guests in total (“We didn't get married in secret,” Françoise insisted), followed by a larger reception at home in France.

Five years later, it emerged that both her maternal grandfather, Eugene Schueller, and her father, Andre Bettencourt, had worked for the far-right, anti-Semitic La Cagoule movement before World War II. Did this fuel the bad feeling? It certainly could have worked. Francoise's husband Jean-Pierre is the grandson of a rabbi who was murdered in Auschwitz and the couple have two children, Jean-Victor and Nicolas Meyers, who were raised Jewish.

(L'Oréal remains a family business; both Jean-Victor, 37, and Nicolas, 35, sit on the L'Oréal board. When he replaced his grandmother on the board, Jean-Victor was 25, making him the youngest director of a listed company in France.)

As awkward as the situation was, Francoise remained close to her father until his death in 2007 and the couples' homes in Neuilly-sur-Seine were just a stone's throw apart.

Shortly after her father's death, Francoise accused one of her mother's best friends, the society photographer Francois-Marie Banier, of manipulating the elderly widow into showering him with gifts worth more than 1 billion euros, including works of art, cash money and life insurance policies. .

She argued that her octogenarian mother was mentally unfit and manipulated by her entourage, especially Banier.

The argument turned into a political scandal in 2010 when it emerged that Liliane's butler had secretly recorded many of her conversations.

The recordings revealed that Liliane had more than 100 million euros in secret Swiss bank accounts, on an undeclared island in the Seychelles, had discussions about various tax avoidance strategies and had ties to Sarkozy's government. In 2015, eight members of the old lady's entourage, including Banier, were convicted of robbing her.

Banier was convicted of 'abuse of weakness', sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to pay ¤158 million in damages. He appealed and his conviction was upheld, but his sentence and fine were reduced

Liliane, meanwhile, was suffering from dementia and was placed under the care of her daughter and two grandsons, a fate she declared would be her “worst nightmare.” They were eventually reconciled.

Françoise said before her mother's death: 'I have always had a good relationship with my parents, and perhaps even more with my mother. My father was in politics and was often absent, but she was the bridge.

“I saw her all the time, before some people interfered in our lives and our relationship to change things.”

Since the death of her mother, Francoise has a dignified figure, her long black hair is not marked by gray. In his book, Tom Sancton describes her as a quiet woman who 'lives in her own cocoon'.

Although she has been a member of L'Oréal's board of directors since 1997 and is chairman of the family holding company (the family has a 33 percent stake in the company), Françoise does not focus solely on the company.

She is also president of her family's philanthropic foundation, which supports French efforts in the sciences and arts. She pledged £173 million to rebuild efforts after the fire that destroyed Notre Dame in 2019.

But above all, the richest woman in the world is happiest not surrounded by luxury and sycophants, but at the keys of her piano.