When Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, died in 2011, he left behind an estimated $10.2 billion fortune, which was inherited by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Laurene is now worth $12.1 billion in the world, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but that wealth won’t continue to the late tech guru’s children.
Steve had four children: daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs, 47, from an on-again, off-again relationship with Chrisann Brennan, and three children with Laurene: son Reed, 33, and daughters Erin, 29, and Eve, 27. While all of his kids have found their place in the world, from software to modeling, they cannot rest on their laurels, thinking that a huge jackpot is coming their way when Laurene passes on.
Laurene explained why she and her late husband made this decision in a February 2020 profile with The New York Times.
“It’s not right for individuals to accumulate a massive amount of wealth that’s equivalent to millions and millions of other people combined,” she shared. “There’s nothing fair about that.”
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Eve Jobs attends the Louis Vuitton Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on March 05, 2024 in Paris, France.
Getty Images for Louis Vuitton
She took the cues from her late husband when it comes to her philosophy of the family’s wealth.
“I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth,” Laurene added. “I am doing this in honor of his work, and I’ve dedicated my life to doing the very best I can to distribute it effectively, in ways that lift up individuals and communities in a sustainable way.”
All four adult children are well aware that the fortune “ends with” her because she’s “not interested in legacy wealth buildings” — they will have to earn their own money to live the lifestyle they want. While this may seem shocking to some people who want to keep the money flowing for generations to come, there are plenty of celebrities who are adopting a similar philosophy to the Jobs family.
Bill Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French, might be the greatest examples of this philosophy. He’s leaving his three children “less than one percent of the total wealth,” which currently stands at $120 billion. “In my case, my kids got a great upbringing and education, but less than one percent of the total wealth…, ” he said in a March 29, 2025, episode of the Figuring Out with Raj Shamani podcast. “I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success, be significant and not overshadowed by the incredible luck and good fortune I had.”
Even Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, who are currently worth $200 million, per Celebrity Net Worth, was pretty frank about why they’ve kept their kids’ lifestyle pretty low-key so far. “I’m not setting up a trust for them,” he said in a February 2018 interview on the Armchair Expert podcast. “We’ll end up giving our money away to charity and to various things. My kids are living a really privileged life, and they don’t even know it. And they’ll never know it, because this is the only one that they’ll know.”
Rich celebrity kids may have it easy when they live under their parents’ roof, but these millionaires and billionaires are making sure their children contribute to society. It’s time to get a job!
Before you go, click here to see the net worth of 15 mega-rich celebrity kids.
