Bernard Arnault’s Empire of Luxuries

The wealthiest man in Europe built a global luxury goods conglomerate with a European manufacturing base but an American and Asian customer base. He is also one of the most important people in Paris.

Bernard Arnault speaks at the École polytechnique in 2017. Photo by Jérémy Barande. Source.

With a net worth of nearly $170 billion as of January 2025, the 75-year-old Frenchman Bernard Arnault, and his family, are ranked as one of the wealthiest people in the world, having even reached first place earlier in the year.¹ Arnault is the CEO and chairman of the French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton—shortened to LVMH—which, with a market capitalization over $300 billion (MC.PA), is the second-most valuable company in Europe behind only Danish Ozempic-developer Novo Nordisk and ahead of Dutch semiconductor company ASML.² Most of Arnault’s wealth, distributed between him and his five children, is attributable to their control and ownership of LVMH via other holding companies. Arnault and his children not only preside over the world’s most expansive luxury goods company, but own newspapers, hotels, and museums, and have a wide network of relationships with political and business elites inside and outside Paris.