Zara Founder and Billionaire Amancio Ortega’s Net Worth and Life Story

Ten years later, in 1985, Ortega incorporated Zara into a holding company called Inditex. He and Mera separated around that time, but she remained the company’s second-largest shareholder.

Source: Bloomberg

Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothing retailer. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands, including Zara, one of the best-known and most successful fashion brands in the world with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries …

Source: Bloomberg, Forbes

In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta,— then a modeling agent and son of designer Roberto Torrettain — at her family’s home in Galicia, Spain. Spanish publications called the ceremony, which reportedly included a socialite-studded guest list, the “wedding of the year.”

Source: Brides, W Magazine

He invested in the Epic Residences and Hotel, a luxurious, 54-story skyscraper in Miami …

Source: Forbes

Despite running a major fashion retailer for four decades, Ortega is intensely private — there were no public photographs of him until 1999, and in 2012, Bloomberg noted that he had only ever granted interviews to three journalists. One Zara employee who worked with him told The Economist in 2016 that “the true story of Amancio Ortega has not been told.”

Source: Bloomberg, The Economist

Ashley Lutz, Mallory Schlossberg, and Melissa Wiley contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Correction: March 27, 2023 – An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of money that Amancio Ortega donated to combat the pandemic. He donated roughly $68 million.