Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates is an American philanthropist and former general manager of Microsoft. Melinda Gates is, however, greatly known as the wife of the richest person Bill Gates. Besides, Gates was once ranked one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes. Melinda is also a co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Completed MBA from Fuqua School of Business

Melinda Gates was born as Melinda Ann Franch was born on 15 August 1964, in Dallas, Texas. She is American by nationality and is White by ethnicity.

She is one of four children of Raymond Joseph French Jr and Elaine Agnes Amerland. Her father worked as an aerospace engineer, and her mother was a homemaker. She was raised along with her elder sister and two younger brothers.

Gates went to Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1982 for her higher education. After she completed her higher education, she went to Duke University with a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics. After that, she earned an MBA degree from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987.

Huge Net Worth of $70 Billion

According to celebrity net worth, Melinda Gates has a huge net worth of $70 billion as of 2019. Her previous work as the general manager of Microsoft earned her a hefty sum of money. Moreover, she must have some stake on the multibillion-dollar company, which makes her net worth count in billions. However, the most reliable and official business magazine, Forbes, hasn't revealed her net worth by far.

As for her husband Bill Gates, he has a net worth of $110.4 billion and makes him the world's richest person in the world as of November 17, 2019.

She is also an author, and as an author, she has written a book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, which is priced at $14.49 for hardcover and $14.57 for a paperback on Amazon.

Melinda Gates published her book SOURCE: Getty Image

As for her properties, she and her husband own a house, Xanadu 2.0, in Medina, Washington. Bill Gates had purchased the  66,000-square-foot property in 1988 for $2 million and splurged $67 million and seven years in refurbishing. The mansion is valued at $127.48 million as of 2019.

Gates also owns a 4.5-acre vacation ranch in Wellington, Florida, with a 12,864-square-foot mansion that he bought for $21 million. The couple also purchased a 228-acre Rancho Paseana in California in 2009 for $18 million and 492-acre Wyoming ranch for $8.9 million back in 2009.

Melinda Gates and her husband own various luxury cars. Some of them include a Porsche Carrera, which costs $91,100, Porches 930, costs around $190,700. Their garage also has Porsche's rarest car, Porsche 959 coupe, which is available at the market for $2 million.

Melinda's family also owns a private jet, Bombardier BD Global Express, for which they spent $40 million. Meanwhile, they also own the 16th Century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript, which Bill Gates bought for $30 million in 1994.

Charity

The Bill & Melinda Foundation has achieved global advancement in education and has donated over $40 billion altogether. Melinda Gates has pledged to donate $1 billion to promote gender equality in the United States over next ten years.

The foundation has also come forward to fight malaria and has pledged $2 billion in help to eradicate the disease. The foundation and Oxitec company collaborated in developing a male mosquito that would kill malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

As per the official Gates Foundation website, it provided a total fund of $5.005 million in various sectors in 2018 alone.

Happily Married To World's Richest Man

As of 2019, Melinda Gates is married to Bill Gates. The couple dated for around six years before they tied the knot on January 1, 1994, in Lanai, Hawaii. Melinda and Bill Gates have given birth to three children.

Melinda Gates with her husband Bill Gates SOURCE: Getty Image

Their three children are Jennifer Katherine Gates, Rory John Gates, and Phoebe Adele Gates. Bill Gates and Melinda Gates have announced that they would leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. Besides the $30 million, Gates duo will donate all of their wealth.

Career of Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates previously worked as a general manager at Microsoft Company owned by her husband. After her first child was born, she resigned from the company to look after her child.

In 1994, she started the William H. Gates Foundation named after her father in law. After some time, the couple merged this organization with two other foundations, Gates Learning Foundation and Gates Library Foundation, and named it Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has been since involved in charity work through the organization. The organization has already donated billions of dollars across the world.

Besides, She also released her book The Moment of Life in 2019.