L'Oreal's Liliane Bettencourt left a $51b estate. Photo / Getty
L'Oreal's Liliane Bettencourt left a $51b estate. Photo / Getty
Today Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the richest woman on the planet — but for years she was caught in a soap-opera-like battle with her own mother over the family's riches.
The 65-year-old is the heir to the L'Oréal cosmetics fortune, and this week was named by Forbes as the world's wealthiest woman.
She is also the 15th richest person overall, with a staggering $51.1 billion to her name.
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers at her mother's funeral. Photo / Getty
But behind that incredible good fortune was a years-long, bitter family feud that spilt over into the courts — and also became a national political scandal.
The iconic French beauty behemoth was founded in 1909 by young French-German chemist Eugène Paul Louis Schueller, who invented a hair dye formula.
It soon expanded into a slew of other cosmetics, and at the age of just 15, Schueller's only child, Liliane Henriette Charlotte Schueller, joined the company as an apprentice.
Schueller married French politician André Bettencourt in 1950 and the couple had one child, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers.
When Schueller died in 1957, his daughter inherited everything, and became L'Oréal's principal shareholder.
Schueller was an alleged Nazi sympathiser, and Bettencourt was once a member of French fascist pro-Nazi group La Cagoule.
However, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers went on to marry Jean-Pierre Meyers, who was the grandson of a rabbi murdered by Nazis at Auschwitz.
After the marriage, the couple decided to raise their two children in the Jewish faith — a move believed to have caused tension within the Bettencourt family.
In 1987, Liliane Bettencourt met celebrity snapper François-Marie Banier, who was 25 years her junior, when he photographed her for a magazine feature.
The pair struck up a close friendship over the years, and Ms Bettencourt began showering him with lavish gifts, splashing up to €1.3b ($2.15b)
They included life insurance policies worth hundreds of millions of dollars, priceless works of art, cold hard cash and even a private island in the Seychelles.
But in 2007, shortly after the death of her father, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers took legal action against Banier, claiming he was taking advantage of her elderly mother.
She also attempted to declare her mother legally incompetent to manage her own affairs and finances.
L'Oreal is one of the world's biggest comestic brands. Photo / 123rf
But Liliane Bettencourt was outraged, and the move sparked a bitter war between mother and daughter which would last years.
In 2010, Bettencourt's butler gave police hours of recordings he had made in secret as he was concerned his employer had Alzheimer's disease and was being swindled by her staff.
The tapes, which were later leaked to the media, allegedly revealed Bettencourt had made Banier her sole heir.
But they caused a political scandal as they also allegedly revealed ongoing tax evasion by Bettencourt and her advisers and also implicated the French labour minister.
The recordings also captured discussions about illegal campaign donations for former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and the entire saga was so scandalous it became known as "the Bettencourt affair" as it played out in the media.
In 2008 Bettencourt told French publication Le Journal du Dimanche: "I can't understand what fly bit my daughter … Maybe jealousy. My daughter is rather introverted, and someone who puts himself out there like François-Marie Banier, well, it might be very annoying."
Then in July 2010, she took another swipe in a statement reported by The Guardian.
"For 40 years I have devoted myself to my role as the chief shareholder of the leading cosmetics group in the world," the statement read.
"I intend to continue with this task and hope that my daughter will not destabilise this group, which my father and I wanted to be French."
In the same month, she also attacked her only child during an interview with France 3 television, telling the network: "I am at once pained and vexed for I say to myself how, after so many years, someone who has lived close to me has such petty reactions".
For her part, Bettencourt Meyers also slammed Banier during a court testimony.
"The strategy of Mr Banier was not just to divide and conquer. It was to break and conquer," she said.
Liliane Bettencourt was a major figuire in French society. Photo / 123rf
"It was programmed destruction."
After that nasty, public spat, mother and daughter finally reconciled in 2010.
