Mining, property, and technology have made the fortunes of Australia’s wealthiest people. Here are the 5 Australians that rank in the Forbes global list of richest people.
Whether it is taking things out of Australian dirt, building housing on top of it, or reimagining the way we work and collaborate with teammates, billions of dollars have been made by homegrown Aussie entrepreneurs excelling at their craft.
Forbes revealed its annual list of the 200 richest people in the world this week, and five familiar names made the cut. The only person to crack the Top 100, is Perth-born mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
Rinehart is the executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting, founded by her parents Lang and Hope Hancock in the Pilbara region of WA in 1955. After her father’s death in 1992, their only child stepped in to lead the company and has since built Hancock Prospecting into Australia’s most successful private company.
Hancock made a record $5.6 billion in profit in the 2024 financial year, mainly off the back of the Roy Hill mining operation in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. A substantial portion of the 64 million tons of iron ore extracted from Roy Hill last year will be shipped to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
In 2025, Rinehart is steering the Hancock ship to double down on natural gas, experiment with robotics and AI, and push back against Australian government red tape and regulations.
Seven decades after the company began, Rinehart holds the mantle as Australia’s richest person and the 61st richest person in the world.
The other four Australian among the 200 richest people in the world are Harry Triguboff (104), Mike Cannon-Brookes (146), Scott Farquhar (153), and the Forrest family (160).
The property mogul
Harry Triguboff built his first apartment block in Tempe, Sydney in 1963. Five years later, he built 18 apartments on Meriton Street in Gladesville, and named his company after the street.
Today, some 3 per cent of Sydneysiders live in one of the 78,000 apartments Triguboff has built. Meriton pioneered build-to-rent and serviced apartments, according to a 2024 Forbes Australia cover story on the 104th richest person in the world. His net-worth is US$19 billion, which equates to $30 billion Australian dollars.
At 92, Triguboff is the oldest Australian on the Top 200 list. The youngest is Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar, closely followed by his co-founder and current Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.
The innovators
Farquhar and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes launched Atlassian in 2002 after meeting as undergraduates at UNSW, Sydney. The company’s mission is to help ‘unleash the power of teams’ and counts NASA, Dropbox, Reddit, and Canva among its 300,000 customers. “From medicine and space travel to disaster response and pizza deliveries, our products help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software,” Atlassian’s website states.
More than two decades after the company got off the ground, the market capitalisation of Atlassian – which trades on NASDAQ under the ticker TEAM – sits above AUD$90 billion.
In August 2024, Farquhar stepped away from the firm that facilitated his AUD$23 billion personal net worth, and his ride-or-die teammate Cannon-Brookes, ranked 146 in Forbes global rankings, stepped up to lead the company as sole CEO.
Farquhar has since been announced as the new chairman of the Tech Council of Australia, taking the reins from Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm.
From Fortescue to philanthropy
Andrew Forrest founded Fortescue Metals Group – an iron ore giant – in 2003. Almost 20 years later, Forrest became Australia’s largest renewables investor, paying $4 billion for wind energy company CWP Renewables through his privately held company Squadron Energy.
Nicola and Andrew Forrest run the Minderoo Foundation in Perth, as well as family office Tattarang, which owns iconic Australian brands R M Williams, Akubra, Camilla, and health technology company Tenmile.
The couple announced they had separated in 2023 but remain among Australia’s most prolific philanthropists. In February, the Minderoo Foundation upped its contribution to Ukraine by $5 million, bringing the total amount it has pledged to the country in the years since the Russian invasion to $25 million.
That same month, the non-profit allocated $160 million to philanthropic organisation Co-Impact to tackle the root causes of gender inequity.
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