Heidi Horten Biography & Net Worth 

Austrian businesswoman Heidi Horten is the widow of the billionaire entrepreneur Helmut Horten. After the death of her husband, Heidi inherited his assets and finances as well, including the widely popular German department store business, Horten AG, which was founded by the late Helmut Horten. Born in Austria in 1941, Heidi was nineteen years old in the year 1960 when she met the late businessman who was 32 years her senior in a bar in Velden am Wörthersee. Helmut Horten was a German businessman who, from the ground up, single-handedly built the fourth-largest department store chain in Germany known as the Horten AG. He was a son of a judge who worked in department stores in Germany as an apprentice before he took control of the business in the year 1933, taking over from the Jewish owners. The Nazis came into power around this time, so the owners of the business fled to the United States in order to save their lives. When he was ready to grow his business, Helmut received the necessary financial assistance from Disconto Bank and Wilhelm Reinhold of the Commerz. He married his bride on July 23, 1966 in Düsseldorf-Lohausen and they both moved to Croglio in the Swiss canton of Ticino before the end of 1968. The late Mr. Horten introduced the country’s first-ever supermarket after a short trip to the United States. Copying the business model he discovered during his visit, his group expanded quickly, and by the end of 1968, was reported to have a turnover of more than a billion euros. More details follow below.

Life & Career

Heidi Horten was born into the family of Mr. and Mrs. Jelinek in Austria on 13 February 1941. She is a billionaire businesswoman and art collector who became wealthy primarily from her marriage to the late German businessman Helmut Horten.

When her husband passed away, Heidi inherited the vast majority of all that he left behind. Helmut Horten founded the German department store business Horten AG.

Mrs. Horten is a member of the board of Helmut Horten Stiftung, a philanthropic foundation that helps people in need, supports various healthcare-related institutions, and funds medical research.

Personal Life

She is the widow of Helmut Horten. They met when Heidi was 19 and Helmut around 51, but their age difference never made it to the picture for once as the late industrialist and his wife lived quietly in a seemingly happy union.

Heidi Horten owns the luxury yacht Carinthia VII. She divides her time between Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, and Vienna, Austria, and Tessin, Switzerland, when in Europe. She enjoys hunting during her spare time.

Not only that, but she also loves art collecting. In 2008, Horten sold the 35.56 carat Wittelsbach Diamond for $24 million. It was formerly part of the crown jewels of Bavaria. She has amassed an art collection of more than 500 respected works, which includes paintings by Yves Klein, Pablo Picasso, Georg Baselitz, Marc Chagall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Gerhard Richter. From her collection, 170 works were exhibited at Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2018. The following year, she announced plans to open a private museum after purchasing a 155-year-old, 22,000-square-foot mansion in the Austrian capital to house the collection. Plans to open her museum to the public are ongoing, and it is expected to be accessible by the public in 2022.

She is not a regular person concerned with political affairs, but she has always shown a degree of support for the Austrian People’s Party. In August 2019, news emerged that the businesswoman and art collector had dispensed more than one million euros in 2018 and 2019 to the Austrian People’s Party.

Heidi Horten Net Worth

Heidi Horten currently has a net worth of $4 billion dollars. Her late husband, the German retailer Helmut Horten, was the founder of the eponymous German department store business Heidi Horten. She inherited her huge fortune from him when he passed on in 1987.

Having inherited her husband’s wealth and various assets, Heidi Helmut, a known art collector, became one of the ten wealthiest billionaires. Actually, she has been listed as the third-richest female billionaire by Forbes magazine. At 81 years of age as of the time of this publication, Mrs. Horten doesn’t have immediate heirs, as she and her late spouse didn’t have any children. She reportedly lives by herself, enjoying the lavishness of her riches, collecting art, and doing good for the less privileged in society through her numerous philanthropic activities, mostly concerned with helping the people around her that are in need while supporting various healthcare-related institutions and funding medical research.