Miriam Adelson

Early life

Adelson was born Miriam Farbstein in Tel Aviv, then in Mandatory Palestine (present-day Israel), in 1945 to parents who fled Poland before the Holocaust. Her father was a prominent member of Mapam, a left-wing political party in Israel. In the 1950s, her family settled in Haifa, where Adelson's father owned and operated several movie theaters. She attended the Hebrew Reali School for 12 years. Prior to her marriage to Sheldon, Miriam was married to Ariel Ochshorn, also a physician, and had daughters Sivan Ochshorn and Yasmin Lukatz. The couple were divorced by 1986.

The fortune

Adelson operates the Adelson Foundations. The foundation is divided into two branches: the Adelson Family Foundation, which was established in 2007, and the Adelson Medical Research Foundation. The former works to strengthen the State of Israel and the Jewish people, while the latter focuses on healthcare. The Adelson Foundation gives $200 million annually to Jewish and Israeli causes, the largest by far of any existing private foundation with that aim. She is a voting member on the board of trustees at the University of Southern California, and was a financial backer of Ariel University's medical school which opened in the West Bank in 2019.

Since the death of her husband, Miriam Adelson has been ranked as one of the wealthiest people in the world. Forbes estimated her net worth at $38.2 billion in 2021, $27.5 billion in 2022, and $35 billion in 2023. In 2024, Adelson's net worth was estimated at $32 billion, making her the richest Israeli and the 53rd-richest person in the world as well as the richest person in the state of Nevada. Forbes has also listed Adelson among the ten richest women in America in 2023 and 2024, ranking her fifth and eighth, respectively. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as of August 2025, Adelson had a net worth of $40.5 billion.

Career

After earning a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she earned a medical degree, graduating magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine. She served mandatory army service as a medical officer at Ness Ziona. She eventually became the chief internist in an emergency room at Tel Aviv's Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital. She went to Rockefeller University in 1986 as an associate physician specializing in drug addiction. There, she was mentored by, and subsequently collaborated for two decades with, Mary Jeanne Kreek, who was known for the development of methadone therapy for heroin addiction. She has published numerous scientific papers on the topic of drug addiction during her career and has been a guest investigator at Rockefeller University.

She met businessman Sheldon Adelson on a blind date in 1989; they married in 1991. Together, they had two sons, Adam Adelson and Matan Adelson. In 1993, the couple opened the first branch of the Adelson Clinic, a substance abuse clinic, in Israel. They opened a second location in Las Vegas in 2000. The clinics specialize in the use of medically assisted detox techniques, such as methodone. In 2018, Adelson was named the publisher of Israel Hayom, the most widely read newspaper in Israel, a position she still holds. That year, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump. After Sheldon Adelson died in 2021, she became the owner of casino company Las Vegas Sands, which he had founded. She remains the majority owner of Las Vegas Sands, which she runs along with her family.