Gina Rinehart

Gina Rinehart
AO
Rinehart in 2015
Born
Georgina Hope Hancock

(1954-02-09) 9 February 1954 (age 70)
Perth, Western Australia
EducationSt Hilda's School
Occupation(s)Mining magnate; company chairwoman, heiress.
Board member ofHancock Prospecting[1][2]
Spouses
  • Greg Hayward
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1973; div. 1981)​
  • Frank Rinehart
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1983; died 1990)​
Children4, including John Hayward-Hancock[3][4][5]
Parents
Websitewww.ginarinehart.com.au Edit this at Wikidata

Georgina Hope Rinehart AO (née Hancock, born 9 February 1954) is an Australian mining magnate and heiress.[6] Rinehart is the executive chairwoman of Hancock Prospecting, a privately owned mineral exploration and extraction company founded by her father, Lang Hancock.

Rinehart was born in Perth, Western Australia, and spent her early years in the Pilbara region. She boarded at St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls and then briefly studied at the University of Sydney, dropping out to work with her father at Hancock Prospecting. She was Lang Hancock's only child, and when he died in 1992 she succeeded him as executive chairwoman.

Rinehart oversaw an expansion of the company over the following decade, and due to the iron ore boom of the early 2000s became a nominal billionaire in 2006. In the 2010s, Rinehart began to expand her holdings into areas outside the mining industry. She made sizeable investments in Ten Network Holdings and Fairfax Media (although she sold her interest in the latter in 2015), and also expanded into agriculture, buying several cattle stations, divesting them within a decade.[7]

Rinehart is Australia's richest person. Her wealth reached around A$29 billion in 2012, at which point she overtook Christy Walton as the world's richest woman and was included on the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. Rinehart's net worth dropped significantly over the following few years due to a slowdown in the Australian mining sector. Forbes estimated her net worth in 2019 at US$14.8 billion as published in the list of Australia's 50 richest people.[8] However, her wealth was rebuilt again during 2020 due to increased demand for Australian iron ore,[9] so that by May 2023, her net worth as published in the 2023 Financial Review Rich List was estimated in excess of A$37 billion;[10] while in March 2021, The Australian Business Review stated her wealth equalled A$36.28 billion.[11][12] As of September 2020 Forbes considered Rinehart one of the world's ten richest women.[13] Rinehart was Australia's wealthiest person from 2011 to 2015, according to both Forbes and The Australian Financial Review; and again every year since 2020, according to The Australian Business Review and The Australian Financial Review.[10][14][15][12]

  1. ^ "Home page". Hancock Prospecting Pty Limited. n.d. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference BRW (A Fairfax Media Publication)-2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference The Australian Women's Weekly-1976 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Gina Rinehart's eldest daughter Bianca handed control of family's $4 billion trust". Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Burrell, Andrew-2012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Bloomberg Billionaires Index". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 29 April 2021. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  7. ^ Schlesinger, Larry (23 September 2021). "Gina Rinehart sells cattle stations for 100m". The Australian Financial Review. Nine Publishing. Archived from the original on 19 May 2022. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Forbes Asia-2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Sprague, Julie-anne (29 October 2020). "Rich List 2020 marks the rise of the ore-ligarchs". The Australian Financial Review. Nine Publishing. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Sprague, Julie-anne-2023 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Bailey, Michael; Sprague, Julianne (29 October 2020). "Rich List 2020: Gina Rinehart is wealthiest person in Australia, followed by Andrew Forrest". Australian Financial Review. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  12. ^ a b Stensholt, John (18 March 2021). "How our biggest names thrived during the pandemic". The Australian Business Review. Archived from the original on 17 May 2021. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  13. ^ "The 10 Richest Women in the World 2020". www.forbes.com. Archived from the original on 5 October 2020. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sprague, Julie-anne-2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sprague, Julie-anne-2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).