Top 10 Richest People in Australia

Australia is one of the richest countries in the world and most of its people who are billionaires are well known in the business world, furthermore, it has produced most of the interesting figures in the entertainment industry.

Australia, the world’s smallest continent and one of the largest countries on Earth, is located in the Southern Hemisphere between the Pacific and Indian oceans.

The isolation from the rest of the world, the country’s low relief, and the drought conditions of much of its surface, which accounts for much of the peculiarity of its plant and animal life, are its most striking features. Numerous varieties of trees and shrubs and the only egg-laying mammals on Earth are among its distinctive animals and plants.

According to Wikipedia, Australia is a highly developed nation with a high-income economy; it has the eighth-highest Human Development Index, the tenth-highest per capita income, and the thirteenth-largest economy in the world. With all of its major cities performing exceptionally well in international comparative livability surveys, Australia consistently ranks among the highest in the world for quality of life, democracy, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties, safety, and political rights.

In this list, we’ll be exploring how many billionaires in Australia briefly, but our main focus is to examine the top 10 richest among Australian billionaires.

Richest People in Australia

Below is the table with the names of each of the billionaires that will be in this list of the top 10 richest people in Australia, along with how much they are worth and their source of wealth;

1. Gina Rinehart – $28.3 billion

The richest person in Australia is Gina Rinehart, she is also the first on this list of richest people in Australia.

Georgina Hope “Gina” Rinehart is a mining tycoon and heiress from Australia. Her father, Lang Hancock, created the privately owned mineral exploration and extraction business Hancock Prospecting, of which she is the Executive Chairman.

In 1992, Rinehart was named executive chairperson of Hancock Prospecting. Gina Rinehart, the richest person in Australia, derived her wealth from iron ore. Rinehart resurrected her late father’s bankrupt company, Hancock Prospecting.
The mining tycoon, who owns a variety of assets throughout the nation, is also Australia’s second-largest cattle producer.
Gina Rinehart runs Hancock Prospecting, a holding company for her family’s enterprises. Hancock Prospective holds half of the Hope Downs mine. In Western Australia’s Pilbara region, Rinehart owns 70% of the Roy Hill iron ore deposit. She holds an 18% stake in Lakes Oil and an 8% stake in Ten Network Holdings.

Her net worth was estimated by Forbes to be $14.8 billion in 2019. Her net worth, as reported in the 2021 Financial Review Rich List, was estimated to be more than A$30 billion by May 2021. In March 2021, The Australian Business Review reported her wealth to be A$36.28 billion and in the early $36 billion, but as of the time of this writing, her net worth has decreased to $28.3 billion as a result of the global decline in wealth.

Gina is the number 46th richest person in the world on the Forbes list of richest people in the world but retains her sport as the richest person in Australia after holding the title for more than 3 years.

2. Andrew Forrest – $15.3 billion

The second on this list of richest people in Australia is businessman John Andrew Henry Forrest, also known as Twiggy. He is best known for serving as the former CEO and current non-executive chairman of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), but he also has business interests in the mining sector and cattle ranching.

In 1994, Forrest founded Anaconda Nickel, which is now known as Minara Resources. He founded Fortescue Metals Group nine years later, which mines and ships iron ore to China.
A division of Fortescue Mining called Fortescue Future Industries is looking into alternative energy sources, such as hydrogen. Andrew Forrest is now concentrating on repositioning the business as a green energy powerhouse to produce steel in Australia by investing in sustainable energy projects.
In order to take advantage of China’s expanding demand for meat and dairy products, he now also has farming interests.

He is the second richest person in Australia and 90 on the Forbes list of the world’s richest billionaires after losing billions in his wealth during the financial crisis of early 2022 that affected most billionaires in the world.

3. Mike Cannon-Brookes – $14.5 billion

Coming up in the third position in this list of richest people in Australia is the accidental billionaire Mike Cannon Brookes.

The Australian billionaire Michael Cannon-Brookes is a co-founder and co-CEO of the software firm Atlassian. Cannon-Brookes frequently carries the moniker of the accidental billionaire because after he and his business partner Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian with the intention of earning the then-typical graduate starting salary of A$48,000 at the large corporations without having to work for someone else. Meanwhile, later on, wealth found them. Soon after graduating from college, he and co-CEO Scott Farquhar founded the business and funded it with credit cards.

The software company Atlassian he cofounded with Scott Farquhar is based in Sydney.
NASA, Tesla, and SpaceX are just a few of Atlassian’s notable clients.

He is on Forbes as the 119 richest people in the world and the third richest person in Australia.

4. Scott Farquhar – $14.4 billion

Scott Farquhar is the fourth richest person in Australia behind his friend and business partner Mike Cannon Brookes. He attended James Ruse Agricultural High School and Castle Hill Primary School before earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales where he met Mike Cannon.

The Australian billionaire Scott Farquhar is a co-CEO of The Sydney, Australia-based, collaborative software company Atlassian. He earns the moniker of the accidental billionaire because after he and his business partner Mike Cannon Brookes founded Atlassian with the intention of earning the then-typical graduate starting salary of A$48,000 at the large corporations without having to work for someone else.

Farquhar is one of the co-founders of Pledge 1%, an organization that encourages businesses to donate at least 1% of their equity, time, or goods to charity.
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes, who own the second- and top-priced homes in Australia, respectively, are reportedly neighbors in Sydney.

They were honored with the 2004 IT Professional of the Year and 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Farquhar gives guest lectures on entrepreneurship to MBA students and undergraduates and has mentored through the Australian Businesswomen’s Network.

5. Harry Triguboff – $10.4 billion

One of the wealthiest people in Australia is the billionaire real estate developer Harry Oskar Triguboff. He is termed as “high-rise Harry” and is the founder and managing director of Meriton.

Triguboff’s business was successful because it offered higher-density living options in Sydney, the biggest city in Australia, which had previously been dominated by free-standing homes.
His apartment-tower development business, Meriton, is well-known in Sydney and has a significant following in southeast Queensland
He was one of the first developers to recognize the potential of apartment buildings.

Meanwhile, He is known as “High Rise Harry” because he has built over 75,000 residences. His fortune is still increasing thanks to Sydney’s booming market.

Triguboff was ranked as the sixth richest Australian as of May 2021 by The Australian Financial Review, according to the 2021 Rich List, with an estimated net worth of AUD17.27 billion. Meanwhile, he has held the position as richest person in Australia in 2016 only for a year. As of the time of this writing, Harry is estimated to be worth $10.4 billion according to Forbes’s real-time net worth.

He is the fifth richest on this list of richest people in Australia.

6. Anthony Pratt & family – $10 billion

The world’s largest privately owned packaging and paper companies, Visy Industries and Pratt Industries in America are both run by Australian businessman and billionaire Anthony Joseph Pratt. He and his sisters Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder inherited the company their grandfather started in 1948 in Melbourne, and his late father Richard expanded it.

He is the son of Jeanne Pratt AC, a philanthropist, and the late Richard Pratt, a former businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club. The Australian Rich List estimates Pratt and his family’s net worth at $27.7 billion. In 2022, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $12 billion while separately valuing his sisters’ wealth.

Anthony is the sixth richest person in Australia equalling the sixth also in this list of richest people in Australia.

7. Frank Lowy – $6.8 billion

Frank Lowy is an Australian-Israeli businessman with Jewish Slovakian-Hungarian ancestry. He served as Westfield Corporation’s longtime chairman and oversaw the administration of US$29.3 billion in assets in the US, UK, and Europe.
He served as the previous chairman of the Scentre Group, which owns and operates retail malls with the Westfield name in Australia and New Zealand.

Lowy built one of the greatest mall industries in the world in 1959 when he established his first retail complex in Sydney.

When Lowy sold his Westfield Corp. to a Franco-Dutch conglomerate in June 2018 for $16 billion, it marked the biggest buyout in Australian history

Today, the Lowy Family Group, which has offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney, is the family’s primary company/business.

8. Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht – $6.5 billion

Melanie Perkins is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Canva.

Perkins is one of the newest female chief executive officers of a tech startup with a market cap of over $1 billion. Perkins was one of the wealthiest women in Australia as of May 2021. private tutor for students learning graphic design

She started her entrepreneurship career by selling scarfs but she decided to enter the digital world when she realise the opportunity it gives after she became aware of the challenges students had while studying design software like Adobe Photoshop, which frequently took them an entire semester of college to understand the fundamentals of these sophisticated design tools while she was a private tutor for students learning graphic design. Perkins saw a financial opportunity in making the design process easier.

Melanie Perkins founded Fusion Books with Obrecht in 2007 after she dropped out of college to focus solely on her dream. Fusion Books became the foundation for Canva after being rejected by hundreds of investors.

Perkins is the eighth richest person in Australia, also the eighth on this list of richest people in Australia with a rising number in her wealth each year.

9. Richard White – $5.1 billion

Taking the ninth spot on this list of richest people in Australia is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of WiseTech, Richard White the software developer.

In 1994, Richard White established the software business WiseTech Global to assist logistics firms in managing products and data along supply chains.
WiseTech’s shares have increased dramatically since the business went public in 2016 as a result of rapid international sales development and acquisitions. He continues to own a majority interest and serves as the company’s CEO.

WiseTech, based in Sydney, is hailed as Australia’s future Atlassian and serves more than 18,000 clients across 165 nations.

CargoWise One, its cloud-based logistics platform, has the ability to automate several processes.

Richard White who is a former musician has also worked as a refrigeration engineer and reseller of computers, he is the ninth richest person in Australia.

10. Alan Wilson and family – $4.6 billion

Coming in the place on this richest people in Australia list is Alan Wilson who is the CEO of Reece Group.

Alan Wilson, an Australian billionaire, is the executive chairman of Reece Group, Australia’s largest bathroom and plumbing supply chain.

The largest retailer of plumbing and bathroom products in Australia, Reece Group, is jointly owned by the Wilson brothers, Alan, John and Bruce.

From 1970 through 2007, Wilson served as Reece’s CEO. Since 2001, he has been as executive chairman.  His son Peter became the CEO upon his retirement. Alan has stepped out from the board but continues to own a sizable portion alongside his brothers John and Bruce.

The Wilson family’s net worth was estimated by The Australian Financial Review to be A$7.86 billion as of May 2021, but there is a decline in their wealth at the time of this writing due to financial instabilities that has affected most business and billionaires around the world.

Top 10 Richest People In Australia

Here is a quick rundown of the richest people in Australia by net worth;

1. Gina Rinehart $28.3 billion
2. Andrew Forrest $15.3 billion
3. Mike Cannon-Brookes $14.5 billion
4. Scott Farquhar $14.4 billion
5. Harry Triguboff $10.4 billion
6. Anthony Pratt & family $10 billion
7. Frank Lowy $6.8 billion
8. Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht $6.5 billion
9. Richard White $5.1 billion
10. Alan Wilson and family $4.6 billion