Alice Walton Net Worth

Background and career

Alice Louise Walton (born October 7, 1949) is an American billionaire and heiress to the fortune of Walmart, as she is the daughter of founder Sam Walton. As of September 2026, Walton has an estimated net worth of $134 billion, making her the richest woman in the world and 14th richest person overall, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Walton was born in Newport, Arkansas. She was raised along with her three brothers in Bentonville, Arkansas, and graduated from Bentonville High School in 1966. She graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A. in economics.

Early in her career, Walton was an equity analyst and money manager for First Commerce Corporation and headed investment activities at Arvest Bank Group. She was also a broker for EF Hutton. In 1988, Walton founded Llama Company, an investment bank, where she was president, chairwoman, and CEO. Walton was the first person to chair the Northwest Arkansas Council and played a major role in the development of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, which opened in 1998. At the time, the business and civic leaders of Northwest Arkansas Council found a need for the $109 million regional airport in their corner of the state. Walton provided $15 million in initial funding for construction, and Llama Company underwrote a $79.5 million bond. The Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport Authority recognized Walton's contributions to the creation of the airport and named the terminal the Alice L. Walton Terminal Building. She was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2001. Llama Company closed in 1998.

Walton and her mother would often paint watercolors on camping trips. The first piece of art Walton purchased was a print of Picasso's Blue Nude when she was ten years old; it cost her 5 weeks allowance. Her first museum quality artwork purchase was of two Winslow Homer watercolors in the late 1980s. In December 2004, Walton purchased art sold from the collection of Daniel and Rita Fraad at Sotheby's, in New York. In 2005, Walton purchased Asher Brown Durand's celebrated painting, Kindred Spirits, in a sealed-bid auction for a purported US$35 million. The 1849 painting, a tribute to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, had been given to the New York Public Library in 1904 by Julia Bryant, the daughter of Romantic poet and New York newspaper publisher William Cullen Bryant, who is depicted in the painting with Cole. She has also purchased works by American painters Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, as well as a notable portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, in preparation for the opening of Crystal Bridges. In 2009, Walton acquired Norman Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter" for $4.9 million. Walton's attempt to quit smoking inspired her to purchase a painting reminiscent of an earlier painting by John Singer Sargent by Alfred Maurer which depicts a full-length woman smoking. In a 2011 interview, she spoke about acquiring great works by other artists, including Marsden Hartley and Andrew Wyeth, saying that she loved the emotion and spirituality they expressed. Other artists whose work Walton has purchased include Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Kehinde Wiley, and Titus Kaphar.

Walton's interest in art led to the Walton Family Foundation developing the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The architect Moshe Safdie designed the 200,000 square foot museum, which was built on 120 acres of Walton family land. Crystal Bridges opened in 2011 and has been visited more than 5 million times as of 2021. It is free to attend. Walton says her motivation for the museum was to give access to art to people who had never had it.

Walton was the 20th-largest individual contributor to 527 committees in the U.S. presidential election 2004, donating US$2.6 million to the conservative Progress for America group. As of January 2012, Walton had contributed $200,000 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC associated with Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Walton donated $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee supporting Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, in 2016. From 2015 to 2018, Walton donated $1.4 million to two PACs affiliated with the Illinois Network of Charter Schools.