Meet billionaire L’Oreal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the richest woman in the world, who has a net worth of $82.1 billion

Her relationship with her mother came to a tipping point when Bettencourt Meyers initiated a decade-long family feud over her inheritance known as “the Bettencourt Affair.”

In a lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers alleged that her mother’s closest friend, photographer François-Marie Banier, used his “platonic love affair” with Bettencourt to manipulate the elderly heiress into giving him approximately $1.86 billion worth of cash, art, and real estate, The New York Times reported. 

Bettencourt Meyers filed a criminal complaint against Banier in December 2007. Bettencourt disputed her daughter’s assertion, saying she freely shared her assets with Banier, according to The Times. In a 2008 letter to Banier, Bettencourt described their relationship: “With you, I am like a mother, a lover, all the feelings pass through me. It makes me tremble,” Vanity Fair reported.

Bettencourt Meyers told a French magazine in 2009 that Banier’s “objective is clear: break away my mother from our family to profit from her. I will not let it happen.”