Because we are travel obsessed, we decided to take a look at how the other half — actually, the top 1% of the 1% — spends their vacation time.
So when you're Oprah Winfrey and you're the richest female celebrity in America and you have a net worth of $2.8 billion (yes, BILLION), where do you go when you want to get away from it all? The famous talk show host's travel picks might surprise you.
Today, Forbes released its first-ever ranking of the wealthiest American celebrities, giving a peek into the bank accounts of some of the richest people on the planet. Most interesting to us here at Women@Forbes are the women on the list: self-made celebs for whom money is no object and who travel in private planes, sail on sleek yachts, stay in expensive villas and own multimillion-dollar vacation homes.
The richest woman on the Forbes list has deemed 2017 the "Year of Adventure" in the January 2017 issue of O. For the cover story of the magazine, Oprah Winfrey even jetted off to one of the nation's most dramatic natural wonders: the Grand Canyon. And yet, she confesses in the magazine's pages that she's actually "a homebody." It makes sense: Earlier this year Winfrey bought a $28.9 million equestrian ranch in California. On the 42-acre property is a 4,800-square-foot house with four fireplaces and a pool, plus plenty of horse stables and riding rings. This isn't Winfrey's only cushy crash pad: She also owns a $14 million mountaintop ski chalet in Telluride, Colorado with its own "wine mine," as well as over-the-top properties in Santa Barbara, California, and Maui.
The next woman on the list is the travel-obsessed Material Girl herself, Madonna. She has made most of her riches due to her concert tours (which have grossed a staggering $1.4 billion). For her birthday this August, Madonna jetted off to Cuba with her children and a group of close friends. They danced on tables at a bar in Havana, toured the city in vintage 1950s cars and stayed at the Hotel Saratoga. In the past year alone, the Queen of Pop has had a number of glamorous trips. She has also been spotted in the southern Italy town of Puglia for a friend's wedding; in the African countries of Kenya and Malawi with her adopted children; and in London, just to name a few. And that's not all: Madonna also owns a horse farm in the tony Hamptons enclave of Bridgehampton, a triple-wide townhouse in Manhattan and she reportedly bought a $20 million penthouse in Tel Aviv. It's no wonder one of Madonna's most famous songs is "Holiday" — she lives it.
Record sales have paid off for another singer — Barbra Streisand, who ranks number 19 on the Forbes list, with an impressive $370 million fortune. Her escape of choice: a clifftop oceanfront compound in the California beach town of Malibu, where Barbra has her own personal shopping arcade that includes "stores" where she can display her collections of antiques. The singer and her husband James Brolin also like to escape to places like the Spanish island of Mallorca and St. Tropez on the French Riviera.
Model-turned-mogul Kathy Ireland ranks number 20 on the list, thanks to her licensing empire Kathy Ireland Worldwide. Among her many business ventures, Ireland rents out a group of homes, so anyone can vacation just like the supermodel herself. One noteworthy property is Casa Elizabeth, the Palm Springs estate that used to belong to Elizabeth Taylor and has been dubbed "The Jewel of the Desert." Ireland originally designed the four-bedroom five-bath property for Taylor. Other locations for Ireland's staggeringly beautiful vacation villas: Greece, Hawaii and Fiji.
Here are a few more female celebs who didn't make the top 20 list, but are wildly wealthy and definitely know how to travel in style.
Red-hot romance novelist Nora Roberts writes five or more books a year that really rake it in. Ireland is one of her favorite retreats, naturally: A number of her books are set there. Roberts has also helped turn her hometown of Boonsboro, Maryland — a rural village near Antietam — into a vacation destination in its own right. She owns two restaurants, a bookstore in a pre-Civil War building called Turn the Page, a gift shop and Inn BoonsBoro, a hotel with rooms named for literary couples like Jane and Rochester from Jane Eyre.
With a growing portfolio of luxurious vacation homes across the U.S., you could say TV's top judge (real name, Judith Sheimdlin) has another career: real-estate mogul. Her new $8.9 million mansion in Naples, Florida mansion is more like a resort, with multiple bedrooms, a lagoon and three waterfalls, no less. She also owns a nine-bedroom manor house in Greenwich, Connecticut; a five-bedroom condo at the luxe Montage Beverly Hills hotel; and an $8.5 million duplex penthouse in Manhattan. It's hard to imagine she has any free time with so many residences, but Judge Judy has also been known to strut her stuff in spots like the Exumas, a chain of islands in the Bahamas.
Romance novel writing clearly pays off. Danielle Steele lives in one of San Francisco's most over-the-top residences: the Spreckels Mansion, an opulent 55-room Beaux Arts manse. Rumor has it that Steele has so many parties that she bought 25 parking spots in the neighborhood to accommodate all her friends' cars.
Millennial pop star Taylor Swift sure knows how to enjoy her down time. In 2013, she snapped up a $17 million oceanfront mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, where she throws a highly Instagrammed Fourth of July party that attracts fellow celebs like Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, Kesha and Blake Lively. Another Swift getaway? Hamilton Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, where she took her 125-person squad on vacation at the end of her concert tour last year.
Funny lady Ellen Degeneres is an avid traveler, vacationing with Portia De Rossi in the French-Caribbean island of St. Bart's; hitting the Dalmatian island of Hvar in Croatia and exploring the Adriatic on a yacht; going on safari in South Africa; and jetting off to the dreamy Tahitian island of Bora Bora. But when she really wants to escape, Degeneres and De Rossi head to their $26.5 million dollar manse in Montecito, California with nine fireplaces and ocean views.
It seems that actress Sandra Bullock is a bit of a real-estate junkie. Over the years, she has amassed homes ranging from a log-cabin style residence just outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming to a three-story oceanfront house with wrap-around porches in charming Tybee Island, Georgia. She's also owned hideaways in the Garden District of New Orleans; on Lake Austin in Austin, Texas; in New York City's SoHo; and in Los Angeles.
Constant touring keeps Katy Perry on the go, but she also manages to squeeze in vacations to places like the Italian island of Sardinia, where she and boyfriend Orlando Bloom made headlines this summer (the couple have also been to Hawaii and France). Another summer favorite: the Greek islands, which was a staple on Perry's Instagram feed.
A previous U.N Goodwill Ambassador due to her tireless work doing field missions around the globe, Angelina Jolie's travels have been well documented. She even penned a book, Notes from My Travels (Simon & Schuster), about her visits with refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador. And then there have been all her other high-profile trips, from Cambodia, where she adopted son Maddox, to Namibia, where she gave birth to daughter Shiloh. Want to vacation like Jolie? Chateau Miraval, her 17th century French estate with soon-to-be-ex-husband Brad Pitt is currently on the market for a cool $60 million.