Melinda French Gates

Her father was an aerospace engineer in Dallas and her mother kept the house, and Melinda was the second of their four children. The family was Catholic and she went to St. Monica and then Ursuline Academy, an all-girls school where she was valedictorian in 1982. At 14 her father and a teacher named Mrs. Bauer put her in front of an Apple II — Bauer had pushed the school into offering computer science at all — and she came out of it writing BASIC. Duke gave her a bachelor's in computer science and economics in 1986 and an MBA from the Fuqua School the next year. Microsoft hired her out of business school in 1987 to build multimedia products, and she began dating its chief executive the same year.

She shipped Publisher, Money, Works, Cinemania, Encarta and Bob, worked on Expedia, and by the early 1990s was general manager of Information Products. She left in 1996. From 2000 she co-chaired what became the largest private charitable foundation in the world, and by 2022 she and Bill Gates had put 59.1 billion dollars of their own money through it, most of it aimed at vaccines, malaria and the diseases that kill poor children before they are five. In 2015 she founded Pivotal Ventures separately, to work on American women and families, and committed a billion dollars to it in 2019 and another billion in 2025. She published The Moment of Lift in 2019 and The Next Day, on what happens after a life ends and another starts, in 2025.

According to the Wall Street Journal she had been meeting divorce lawyers since at least October 2019, when her husband's dealings with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became public. The petition was filed on May 3, 2021, after 27 years of marriage, and was final on August 2. She stayed on as co-chair for three more years and then resigned on May 13, 2024, effective June 7. The settlement gave her 12.5 billion dollars for philanthropy of her own. The foundation dropped her name and became the Gates Foundation, with her former husband as sole chair. She had spent a quarter of a century building an institution and left it with money instead of the institution.

What she did next was political. A practicing Catholic, she became one of the Democratic Party's larger donors with abortion rights as the focus, gave more than 10 million dollars ahead of the 2024 election, and made the first presidential endorsements of her life — Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris. Pivotal put 250 million dollars into women's health grants in October 2024. Forbes valued her at 30.4 billion dollars in February 2026, the 72nd richest person alive. In June 2026 she joined the ownership group of the Seattle Kraken. Whether the second career outruns the first is not answerable yet. The foundation she built is still spending, and so is she, and the two are no longer the same argument.

Melinda French Gates's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Microsoft Encarta other
  One of the multimedia titles she ran as general manager of Information Products 1993
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation company
  Co-chaired until 2024 — 59.1 billion dollars of their own money by 2022 2000
• Pivotal Ventures company
  Her own vehicle, aimed at American women and families 2015
• The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World book 2019
• The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward book
  Written after leaving both the marriage and the foundation 2025

• 1978 aged ~14 Meets an Apple II at 14, through her father and a teacher named Mrs. Bauer Bauer had argued the all-girls school into teaching computer science.
• 1982 aged ~18 Graduates as valedictorian of Ursuline Academy of Dallas
• 1987 aged ~23 Takes an MBA at Fuqua and joins Microsoft She began dating Bill Gates the same year.
• January 1, 1994 aged 29 Marries Bill Gates in a private ceremony on Lanai, Hawaii
• 1996 aged ~32 Leaves Microsoft
• 2000 aged ~36 Becomes co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• 2015 aged ~51 Founds Pivotal Ventures
• May 3, 2021 aged 56 Files for divorce after 27 years Final on August 2, 2021.
• May 13, 2024 aged 59 Resigns as co-chair of the foundation, effective June 7 She left with 12.5 billion dollars. The foundation dropped her name.

• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. married to
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. endowed the foundation
• MacKenzie Scott b. 1970
  Novelist and philanthropist who has given away billions to hundreds of organizations with no strings attached. the other giver who left a marriage and kept giving
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. the model for giving on this scale
• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. her foundation's central cause