Yang Huiyan   ($19.5 BILLION )
The 36 year old Yang Huiyan attended Country Garden Holding’s private non-profit boarding high school, Guangdong Country Garden School, which was established by her father, Kwok Keung Yeung in 1994. She was also reportedly sent to the U.K. during her second year of high school to improve her English language proficiency.
She inherited most of the wealth from her father.Her Father, Kwok Keung Yeung, also known as Guoqiang Yang, was a rice farmer and part-time bricklayer in Shunde in southern China’s Guangdong Province. He later started buying up and developing vacant lots of land, which resulted in the founding of Country Garden Holdings in 1992. The real estate development company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007. The company generated annual revenues of more than $15 billion in 2013. The Yang family has given more than $100 million towards charitable causes. Yang also received the “China Charity Award Special Contribution Award” in 2008 and was ranked first by Hurun China Philanthropy in 2013.
Her family have given more than $100 million towards various charitable causes. Recipients include Guangzhou Foundation for Justice and Courage, Guangdong Youth Development Foundation and Sun Yat-sen University. She launched the Wenchuan Earthquake Orphan Fund in Guangdong Youth Development Foundation in 2008. In the same year, she and her father, Kwok Keung Yeung donated about $14 million to support education for children affected by the Sichuan earthquake. In November 2013, Yang and her father co-founded the Guangdong Guoqiang Charity Fund. The fund started with about $1.6 million; in 2014. .By then it had total assets of about $25 million and income of $30 million.
Making of her wealth
In 1997, his father Yang Guoquian founded the Biguiyuan Company. However, the stocks were offered to the public for sale in 2007. Yang Guoquian had already transferred 70% of the Country Garden’s share to his daughter Yang Huiyan. She joined Country Garden Holdings in 2005, and was appointed as its Vice Chairman in 2012. Yang is held in-charge of the Country Garden’s development strategies.
Yang Huiyan was once considered as one of the richest billionaires in Mainland China. In fact, she was claimed to worth $14.1 billion in 2007. Yang Huiyan saw the drastic drop of her fortune from $16.2 billion to $4.7 billion in 2012. In 2009, her fortune dropped to $3.9 billion. However, Yang Huiyan has an estimated net worth of $19.5 billion as of October 2017, according to Bloomberg.
