Which Universities Create the Most Female Self-Made Billionaires?

Becoming a millionaire is quite the accomplishment, so you can imagine the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to become a self-made billionaire.

Female self-made billionaires are particularly rare, as can be seen by looking at Hurun’s annual Richest Self-Made Women in the World list. This year, Hansoh Pharma’s Zhong Huijuan, 59, became the world's most successful self-made woman with a net worth of US$15.1bn.

Of the world's top 20 richest women, only three are self-made with the other 17 benefiting from inherited wealth. For example, Alice Walton, 70, is the richest woman in the world with a personal fortune of US$59bn and she’s the eldest daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

There’s a notable gender gap when it comes to the richest people on the planet as well, with only three of the top 20 richest men benefiting from inherited wealth.

This year, Hurun found 100 self-made women billionaires, and 61 percent of them originate from China.

Wondering which universities might be best-placed to propel you into a billionaire lifestyle? The below table looks at which institutions are the alma mater for the world’s richest self-made female billionaires. As you can see only a handful of universities can claim to have educated more than one of the female billionaires on Hurun’s list.

 Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University have produced the most self-made female billionaires (three respectively):

• Zhejiang University: Chen Xioaying, Chen Ailian, Wu Yan
• Tsinghua University: Chen Ailian, Zhang Xiaojuan, Wang Laichun

Both universities have business schools for students wanting to hone their business knowledge:

• Zhejiang University School of Management
• Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management

10 institutions have produced two self-made female billionaires, while a further 66 universities have educated one self-made billionaire each.

However, there are also 32 self-made female billionaires today who didn’t attend university – so you don’t need to pin all your hopes for success on being accepted into a particular institution!

Examples include Giuliana Benetton - who co-founded the clothing company Benetton Group with her siblings - and Diane Hendricks, co-founder of American building supply company ABC Supply.

As is to be expected from a list dominated by Chinese billionaires, Chinese-based universities make up almost a third of the institutions on the list this year. The US and the UK are second and third.

As well as educating four of the UK’s wealthiest females, the UK also welcomed Chinese national and real estate mogul Zhang Xin as an international student. Zhang Xin undertook her master’s degree at Cambridge and her undergraduate degree at the University of Sussex.

Britain’s wealthiest female self-made millionaire, Denise Coates, attended the University of Sheffield. Since graduating, the founder of Bet365 has built up a net worth of £7.3billion. In fact, Denise is the 11th richest woman on the planet!

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, attended the University of Exeter for her undergraduate degree.