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French businessman (born 1949)
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French businessman. He is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is one of the richest individuals in the world; as of December 2025, he has an estimated net worth of US$190.4 billion according to Forbes and US$203 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault was born on 5 March 1949 in Roubaix. His mother, pianist Marie-Josèphe Savinel, daughter of Étienne Savinel, had a "fascination for Dior". His father, manufacturer Jean Léon Arnault, a graduate of École Centrale Paris, owned the civil engineering company Ferret-Savinel. Raised in a "strict Catholic-Auvergne" style by his devoutly Catholic grandmother, Arnault took classical piano lessons as a child and was educated at Catholic schools, the Lycée Maxence Van Der Meersch in Roubaix and the Lycée Faidherbe in Lille, which takes boarders and prepares them for the grandes écoles. In 1971, he finished his studies in civil engineering and mathematics at French university École Polytechnique in 1971
Arnault plays tennis weekly, watches his weight, and works continually.
In 1973, Arnault married Anne Dewavrin. Together, they had two children, Delphine and Antoine. They separated in 1990. In 1991, he married Hélène Mercier, a Canadian-born concert pianist. They have three sons, Alexandre, Frédéric, and Jean. Arnault and Mercier live in Paris. Arnault has four grandchildren, two from his son Antoine and two from his daughter, Delphine. All five children—Delphine, Antoine, Alexandre, Frédéric, and Jean—have official roles in brands controlled by Arnault, along with his niece Stephanie Watine Arnault. Alexandre is the EVP of Tiffany & Co., Frédéric is the CEO of LVMH Watches, and Jean is the Director of Watchmaking Marketing and Development at Louis Vuitton. Since 2010, Arnault's daughter Delphine has been with Xavier Niel, a French billionaire businessman active in the telecommunications and technology industry. Effective February 1, 2023, Delphine is the chief executive officer of the luxury brand Dior.
In 1971, soon after his graduation, Arnault began work for his father's company. Three years later, after he convinced his father to shift the focus of the company to real estate, Ferret-Savinel sold the industrial construction division and was renamed Ferinel. Following the acquisition of a textile company and relocation of its headquarters, the company renamed the real estate branch to the George V Group. The real estate assets were later sold to Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE), eventually becoming Nexity.
In April 1999, Arnault was first considered to be the richest person in fashion, topping Zara's Amancio Ortega. That same year, he set up Pilinvest (Pilinvest Participations and Pilinvest Investissements), a holding company based in Belgium. Through Pilinvest, Arnault has been holding an 81% stake in Agache (former Groupe Arnault), the holding company that owns 48% of LVMH and 63% of its voting rights. In 2008, he established Protectinvest, a private foundation in Belgium set up to safeguard the integrity of the LVMH group until 2023; the foundation locked up the Arnault children's ability to sell shares in Pilinvest until 2023, by which time Arnault's youngest child turned 25, an age deemed old enough to assume responsibility for LVMH. In December 2011, six months before Socialist François Hollande took office as President of France, he transferred a 31 percent stake in Groupe Arnault – at the time considered by the newspaper Libération worth €6.5 billion – to Pilinvest. In 2016, Arnault was paid €7.8 million as the CEO of the LVMH group. In July 2019, Arnault became the second-richest man in the world, with a net worth of $103 billion. Arnault briefly surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world in December 2019, and again for a short time in January 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Arnault saw his wealth shrink by $30 billion as sales of luxury goods plummeted. On 5 August 2021, Arnault regained the status of the wealthiest man in the world, with his net worth climbing to $198.4 billion. This occurred as sales of LVMH's luxury goods surged in China and other parts of Asia. He is listed as "Bernard Arnault & family" on the Forbes Billionaires list. Forbes estimated the Bernard Arnault & family fortune to be $158 billion in 2022, positioning him ahead of Bill Gates. In 2022, Arnault changed the legal structure of Agache from a Societas Europaea (SE) to a joint-stock partnership to ensure family control over LVMH in the long term. Arnault and his family had an estimated peak net worth of US$240.7 billion in April 2023, according to Forbes. This made him the richest person in the world at the time, surpassing Elon Musk. Musk would surpass Arnaut in June 2023 in net worth with $240 billion, as Arnault's wealth dropped to $190 billion. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index Arnault was the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of about US $218 billion in May 2024. By 14 June 2024, according to Forbes, Musk had regained first place, with Bezos in second place, and Arnault, with US$194.2 billion, in third place.
Biographical detail compiled from Wikipedia and Wikidata, which are edited openly and may be incomplete or out of date. Fleet data is our own. Source →
