Mohn is the largest shareholder of Bertelsmann, a German media company. The closely held conglomerate has interests in printing and publishing businesses Penguin Random House and Gruner + Jahr, broadcaster RTL Group and customer service company Arvato. It had revenue of 20.2 billion euros ($22.3 billion) in 2022.
The majority of Mohn's fortune is derived from her stake in Guetersloh, Germany-based Bertelsmann, a media company. The Mohn family owns 19.1% of Bertelsmann, according to its website. Liz Mohn is credited with the entire stake to reflect her position on the supervisory board and status as family matriarch.
The closely held business had revenue of 20.2 billion euros ($21.3 billion) and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 3.2 billion euros in 2022, according to its annual report. It's valued using the average enterprise value-to-sales and average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiples of three publicly traded peer companies: News Corp, Alma Media Oyj and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA.
The value of her cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, taxes and market performance.
Markus Harbaum, a spokesperson for Bertelsmann, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Elisabeth Mohn is the widow of Reinhard Mohn, the great-great-grandson of Carl Bertelsmann, founder of what is now Europe's largest media company. Bertelsmann started a namesake publisher of hymn books and religious material in Guetersloh, Germany in 1835. His descendants have maintained control of the closely held business ever since.
Reinhard Mohn was born in 1921. He was drafted into military service for Nazi Germany after graduating high school and became a prisoner of war of the U.S. Army. He returned home to Germany in 1946 and the following year took over the family company, which he expanded into broadcasting and magazine publishing across Europe during the ensuing decades.
Reinhard met his future wife, Elisabeth Beckmann, when she was a 17-year-old high school dropout working as Bertelsmann secretary. They met during a game of musical chairs at a company party in 1958. Mohn was in his late 30s and married with three children when the two started an affair, according to her memoir "Key Moments: Experiences in a Dedicated Life." She became pregnant with their first child, Brigitte, in 1963. To avoid a scandal, she married Joachim Scholz, a children's books editor at Bertelsmann, and continued the affair with Mohn, with whom she had two children, Christoph and Andreas.
The two married in 1982 after each divorced their first spouses. Mohn recognized his three children out of wedlock and prepared them for roles in the Bertelsmann business. None of the three children from his first marriage hold a top position at the company. He died in 2009, and his wife inherited a 20 percent stake in the company. The Bertelsmann Foundation, which was founded by Reinhard Mohn in 1977, controls the rest of the shares, and has given away more than $1 billion to political, social and economic causes.