Here's why Oprah Winfrey is the African-American billionaire with the most properties

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most renowned media personalities, not only in the U.S. but across the globe. She started her career in media as a teenager and eventually cemented her position as the queen of talk shows.

Her journey has been quite a roller coaster, nonetheless, she overcame challenges and trauma to reach a height where she became a global idol, icon, and entrepreneur with a net worth of over a billion dollars.

In 2018, she hit a record net worth of $4 billion courtesy of the performance of Weight Watchers International Inc., with which she partnered in 2015. The weight-loss company increased her fortune by $427 million that year.

Winfrey owns other businesses including The Oprah Winfrey Show and the cable network OWN. She partnered with Apple to produce original content and programming for the tech company. The media mogul is also a real estate investor.

Winfrey is among a group of wealthy Americans who have been snapping properties around the U.S. and the world. She was featured in Forbes’ latest publication on “billionaires who own the most properties.” Forbes found at least five billionaires with 10 or more homes and plenty of others who own at least half a dozen. They included Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Ron Burkle, Mike Bloomberg, Ken Griffin, Jeff Greene, Stan Kroenke & Ann Walton Kroenke, Russ Weiner, Winfrey, Dagmar Dolby, Robert Kraft, Gerald Ford, Josh Harris, Peter Thiel, Nancy Walton Laurie and Charles Zegar.

Forbes uncovered six different LLCs appearing to belong to Winfrey, through which she owns some 2,000 acres of property and an undetermined number of homes in Hawaii. For some years, she has been a part-time Maui resident and she was recently seen hiking with her celebrity TV friend, Gayle King, on Kauai, Hawaii. She recently acquired 870 acres of land in Kula for nearly $6.6 million. According to Maui Now, the acquisition adds to hundreds of acres of real estate she already owns in Kula and in Hāna.

The platform said she bought four parcels in total. Two parcels were sold on February 10 by ʻUlupalakua Ranch to Winfrey’s Los Angeles-based company, Harpo Inc. The platform further reported that about 520 acres went for $3.89 million and 330 acres sold for $2.47 million. The other two parcels of 10 acres each were sold on December 30, 2022, to Harpo Inc. for $100,000 apiece, Maui Now said. Prior to that, she bought a 43-acre waterfront estate on Orcas Island for $8.3 million in 2018. In 2021, she sold the property for $14 million.

With an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion, Forbes noted that Winfrey has at least 10 residences with the primary one located at Montecito, Calif. The outlet said Winfrey started purchasing land for her Montecito ‘Promised Land’ estate in 2001 and today the 40-acre property contains not only a main house and a guest home but also a tennis court and pool. Even though the media mogul reportedly sold one of her other properties in the seaside town to actress Jennifer Aniston last year, she still owns four others in the same neighborhood as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Forbes wrote.