Mrs. Bettencourt had been reported to have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and had been under the guardianship of her family since 2011. In recent years, Forbes magazine had ranked Mrs. Bettencourt as the richest woman in the world, with an estimated net worth of about $45 billion. “I can’t understand what fly bit my daughter,” Mrs. Bettencourt told the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche in 2008. In the weeks following the tapes’ release, a former accountant to Mrs. Bettencourt claimed that her job entailed handing out cash-stuffed envelopes to conservative politicians. Mrs. Bettencourt established the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation in 1987; it donates money to French medical research, cultural projects and humanitarian efforts.

Source: Washington Post September 21, 2017 17:32 UTC