LGBTQ Billionaires
To achieve the financial status of billionaire puts an individual in a very small, high profile group. Assuming it was earned (versus inherited), it connotes a high degree of success and accomplishment. Along with it comes a great burden of responsibility to a community and the world at large.
To be LGBTQ and a billionaire puts additional pressure on an individual and makes them that much more unique. Historically, it would have been difficult to be so high profile and public about one's sexuality because being a billionaire imposed a need to socialize in a broad financial and political world that regarded homosexuality as taboo. Today, the constraints about personal sexuality in many parts of the world are not as severe, and hence we can identify billionaires who publicly acknowledge they are LGBTQ.
We have identified a number of individuals, both historical and contemporary, who can be classified as billionaires. Interestingly, the historical characters were all European while the contemporary characters are American. With historical figures, we have had to go with a consensus of the translation of their value at the time they lived to today's monetary value.
- William Beckford, Great Britain - sugar plantations
- Gigi Chao, China - property
- William Courtenay Earl of Devon, Great Britain - gentry
- Domenico Dolce, Italy - fashion
- Friedrich Karl Flick, Austria - steel and coal
- Stefano Gabbana, Italy - fashion
- David Lawrence Geffen, United States - film and entertainment industry
- Chris Hughes, United States - co-founder of Facebook
- Michael Kors, United States - fashion
- Frederich Alfred Krupp, Germany - steel and manufacturing
- Cecil Rhodes, South Africa - diamond mining
- Jennifer Pritzker, United States - hotels
- Jon Stryker, United States - medical equipment
- Peter Thiel, United States - co-founder, PayPal
- Horace William, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole, Great Britain - member of Parliament
