This is no secret. This is old news, in fact. But when was the last time you sat down and thought about how she lives? Thought about how much money she really has? To start, she is currently worth $2.9 billion. According to Forbes, she is the second richest woman in America, counting only those who have self-made fortunes. She owns the television company OWN, of course, as well as Weight Watchers, which brought in over $1 billion last year.
She’s America’s first black woman to become a billionaire, a fact that is equal parts impressive and frustrating in its tardiness. She has enough money to fund OWN entirely out of her own pocket for the next two decades. She’s worth more than several small countries. If you laid out her fortune in cash it would weigh 60,000 pounds. It’s almost impossible to be jealous, because her life is just too fabulous to fathom.
First is a 23,000-square-foot home in Montecito, a tony enclave outside of already-tony Santa Barbara, that she bought for $50 million back in 2004. (Let’s all take a moment to imagine how much $50 million was 14 years ago.) The house was so lavish that she actually ended up shelling out to hire a team of architects and designers to give it a makeunder.
Then comes her other Montecito compound—because why own one hillside southern California mansion when you can own two? She acquired this property a few years ago, and it’s decidedly more rustic than the first. But before you picture a quaint little cabin in the woods, just know that it’s actually a 23-acre horse farm that cost $28 million.
For her vacation purposes, Winfrey escapes to Maui, where she has a 163-acre property with a beautifully renovated farmhouse on the property, or to Jackson Hole, where she has a $14 million abode complete with a treetop fire pit, whatever the heck that means.
There’s no way that a person can put on the daily grind that the media mogul does without occasionally pressing pause to recharge, and that’s exactly what she does, to an impressive degree. Most of her vacations are done in tandem with her BFF and permanent travel partner, Gayle King (Winfrey’s partner Stedman Graham keeps a decidedly lower profile than Gayle).
They’ve toured Italy, stopping to pick truffles in Umbria and go wine tasting in Tuscany and to meet the Italian premier. They’ve gone clubbing in Ibiza with will.i.am and music industry legend Jimmy Iovine.
Oprah herself has taken her entire staff on a vacation-turned-retreat to her Maui estate. And, perhaps most fabulous of all, a recent trip to Tahiti with the Obamas, Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen, which was topped off by cruises on David Geffen’s luxury yacht. Don’t ever tell Oprah she doesn’t know how to let loose.
Winfrey of course is no stranger to Tinseltown, having dabbled in producing and acting in everything from Lee Daniels’ The Butler to Selma, but she’s been turning to Hollywood with full force as of late. It all started with a gig as executive producer of the scripted television series Queen Sugar, which follows a set of siblings in a dispute over a family-owned sugarcane farm. The series aired on her eponymous network, but it was a bit of gateway drug, if you will.
The flick was directed by none other than Ava DuVernay, who told E! News shortly after wrap time that while Winfrey was a fantastic addition to the cast, perhaps her most valuable contribution was the epic party she threw for the entire crew, where she served up the margaritas herself. [Ed note: How do we get in on that?]
Winfrey herself raved about the filming experience, telling E! that it was “one of the greatest experiences of her career.” It seems that the acting bug really set in, as it was just announced that she’ll be starring in a reboot of Terms of Endearment. Billionaire or not, Oprah isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
