After stepping away from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2024, which she helped co-found in 2000, Melinda French Gates announced a $1 billion donation to support women and families.
Melinda French Gates started working for Microsoft in 1987 as a product manager. She stayed at the company for nine years, where she met her future husband (now ex-husband), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Her fortune stems from her share of the couple’s wealth after their divorce. Her ex-husband, Bill, was the world’s richest person from 1995 to 2007, according to data from Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List.
Melinda French Gates has been involved in philanthropic efforts for decades. She is pictured here accepting the Innovator Award in Philanthropy onstage at the WSJ Magazine 2016 Innovator Awards.Rabbani and Solimene Photography / Getty Images
In May 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage. While the exact settlement details have not been shared publicly, Reuters reported that she received $12.5 billion for her charitable work. (Since the couple separated, she has publicly gone by Melinda French Gates.)
Melinda wrote an op-ed on May 28, 2024 for The New York Times, in which she announced her $1 billion donation, to be paid out over two years. She wrote, “For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
She announced her departure from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on X two weeks earlier, on May 13, 2024.
In her article, she added that she had already begun directing new grants through her organization, Pivotal, which she founded in 2015 as a separate entity aimed at identifying and implementing solutions to problems affecting U.S. women and families.
The largest segment of this donation ($250 million) will go toward improving women’s health globally, according to an announcement on Pivotal’s website.
This was actually the second $1 billion she committed to these causes; the first was announced in 2019.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation changed its name to the Gates Foundation in January 2025, and Bill has remained the sole chairperson.
As of November 2026, Forbes estimates her net worth to be $34.5 billion. In an exclusive with People, she explained that she is driven to give away much of her wealth: “I believe the only responsible thing to do with these resources is to give it away — as thoughtfully and impactfully as possible.”
Related: Mary Elizabeth Garrett donated $306,977 to finish the fund that opened the Johns Hopkins medical school in 1893; she required that women be admitted on the same terms as men
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