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Meet Australia’s Richest Women Under 40

Dollar dollar bills y’all

If you’re eating tuna and rice until payday: don’t read this story.

The Financial Review’s Young Rich List has just been announced and it includes nine women – up from eight last year – with eye watering fortunes. 

Australia’s richest woman under 40 is tech tycoon Cyan Ta’eed with a shared wealth of $216 million. Fellow tech entrepreneur, Melanie Perkins, who co-founded the graphic design app Canva, came in second on the list with a shared worth of $128 million.

Richest Women
Australia’s richest women are Cyan Ta’eed, Melanie Perkins and Erica Baxter. (Credit: LinkedIn; Getty)

Our third richest woman is model (and ex-wife of James Packer) Erica Baxter ($79 million), followed by fitness guru Kayla Itsines ($63 million) and model Miranda Kerr ($44 million). 

Kerr is the only woman in the top five who doesn’t share her wealth – having built a skincare empire on her own before getting hitched to billionaire Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel this year.

If you haven’t been blessed with model looks like Kerr or Baxter and aren’t prepared to work out everyday on Instagram like Itsines, it might be time to learn how to code – a la Ta’eed and Perkins.

Our two richest women both made their fortunes in the technology industry, and Perkins says you can, too! The Canva CEO, who came up with the idea for her app when she was a teenager at university, is passionate about encouraging more women to get into tech.

“When someone is considering what they’d like to do with their career, they should definitely consider technology. It’s such a booming industry – and it will be for a long time more,” says Perkins.

Her secret to succeeding in the booming tech game is determination. “I think determination is the most underrated skill. If you work hard enough for something, you can create something incredibly powerful,” says Perkins. Get to it.

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