Meet America's top 10 most successful businesswomen in 2023

Diane Hendricks. Image: Getty Images

1. Diane Hendricks

• Wealth: $15 billion
• Source: Building supplies
• Age: 76
• Residence: Afton, WI

The residential construction boom continued in 2022 and pushed sales at Hendricks’ ABC Supply, which she owns, up 25 percent to $18.5 billion. That lifted her fortune by nearly $3 billion. She also runs Hendricks Holding, which has investments in manufacturing, real estate, construction, recycling and life sciences.

Judy Love. Image: Courtesy of Judy Love

2. Judy Love

• Wealth: $10.2 billion
• Source: Gas stations
• Age: 85
• Residence: Oklahoma City

Her husband of 62 years, Tom, died in March 2023. Her fortune now includes his half of Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, the retailer the pair started together in 1964 with a $5,000 loan. The $26.5 billion (est revenue) company, which her sons Greg and Frank have run as co-CEOs since 2014, plans to open 25 new locations this year and invest $1 billion in renovating and updating existing stores.

Judy Faulkner. Image: Courtesy of Epic Systems

3. Judy Faulkner

• Wealth: $7.4 billion
• Source: Healthcare software
• Age: 79
• Residence: Madison, WI

Epic Systems, the electronic health records company Faulkner founded in 1979, announced an expanded partnership with Microsoft in April to use generative AI to help draft responses to patients’ messages and improve data analysis for hospital customers. Epic, which had $4.6 billion in 2022 revenue, also launched a programme last year to help match hospitals with clinical trials.

Lynda Resnick. Image: Getty Images

4. Lynda Resnick

• Wealth: $5.3 billion
• Source: Agriculture
• Age: 80
• Residence: Beverly Hills, CA

The nation’s richest farmers, Resnick and her husband, Stewart, co-own the $5 billion (sales) agricultural giant Wonderful Co, which grows and sells pistachios, almonds, pomegranates, mandarin oranges and seedless lemons from 135,000 acres in California’s Central Valley, Texas and Mexico. Caltech, to which the couple pledged $750 million in 2019, is nearing completion on a 79,500-sq-ft sustainability centre to be named after them.

Thai Lee. Image: Forbes

5. Thai Lee

• Wealth: $4.8 billion
• Source: IT provider
• Age: 64
• Residence: Austin, TX

America’s most successful female immigrant has run IT provider SHI International for 34 years. The company, US’s largest minority and woman-owned enterprise, is investing heavily in its international operations, which grew by 25 percent in 2022; that helped boost overall revenue to $14 billion, up nearly 14 percent from the previous year.

Johnelle Hunt. Image: Getty Images

6. Johnelle Hunt

• Wealth: $4.4 billion
• Source: Trucking
• Age: 91
• Residence: Fayetteville, AR

Six decades ago Hunt co-founded rice hull packaging firm JB Hunt with her husband (d 2006); they later turned it into a trucking firm. She was the detail-oriented business manager; he was the ideas person. “Johnnie was looking through the windshield and I was always looking through the rearview,” Hunt once said. She is still a key shareholder of the $18 billion (market cap) freight haul company.

Gail Miller. Image: Getty Images

7. Gail Miller

• Wealth: $4.2 billion
• Source: Car dealerships
• Age: 79
• Residence: Salt Lake City

Miller wants to bring Major League Baseball to Utah. In April she and her family announced they’re leading a group of investors called Big League Utah that hopes to land an expansion team or an existing franchise. She and her husband, Larry (d 2009), owned the NBA’s Utah Jazz for 35 years before selling a majority stake in 2020 to fellow Utah billionaire Ryan Smith. In 2021 she sold the car dealerships she started with her husband for nearly $3.5 billion.

Marian Ilitch. Image: Getty Images

8. Marian Ilitch

• Wealth: $4 billion
• Source: Little Caesars
• Age: 90
• Residence: Bingham Farms, MI

Ilitch’s Little Caesars, which had nearly $5 billion in estimated system-wide sales in 2022, became the official pizza sponsor of the NFL last year. She also owns an NHL team (Detroit Red Wings), an MLB team (Detroit Tigers) and the MotorCity Casino Hotel, as well as other companies in the food, sports and entertainment industries. She’s the chairwoman of Ilitch Holdings while her son Chris is CEO.

Elizabeth Uihlein. Image: Getty Images

9. Elizabeth Uihlein

• Wealth: $3.7 billion
• Source: Packaging materials
• Age: 77
• Residence: Lake Forest, IL

Starting in their basement in 1980, Uihlein and her husband, Richard, built packaging supplies company Uline into a $6.1 billion (annual sales) giant. Elizabeth is its president, while Richard is CEO of the company, which sells more than 41,000 items including cardboard boxes and bubble wrap, via its well known catalogue. Together the couple have donated at least $190 million to conservative political causes.

Peggy Cherng. Image: Getty Images

10. Peggy Cherng

• Wealth: $3.1 billion
• Source: Fast food
• Age: 75
• Residence: Las Vegas

Her Panda Express chain is celebrating 40 years of dishing out Chinese-American cuisine at malls, airports and free-standing stores, mainly in the US. An electrical engineering PhD, Cherng worked for Mc-Donnell Douglas and 3M before leaving to co-found the business with her husband, Andrew, in 1983. Cherng serves as co-CEO, with Andrew, of the 2,300-location chain, whose sales topped $5 billion last year. “I’ve always upheld a family-first mindset,” she tells Forbes.