Meet Laurene Powell Jobs, the mysterious woman who inherited Steve Jobs' fortune

Thomson Reuters

Laurene Powell Jobs is not just the widow of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. She's also an accomplished businesswoman and a generous philanthropist.

And she ranks among the 50 richest people in the world, according to Wealth-X.

Upon her husband's death in 2011, Powell Jobs inherited his fortune — primarily shares of Apple and Disney — which has grown to an estimated $14.4 billion. Though she remains staunchly private about her personal life and relationship with her late husband, Powell Jobs has more openly discussed her business ventures and philanthropic pursuits in recent years.

Read on to meet the mysterious woman who's carrying on Steve Jobs' legacy, in her own way.

Laurene Powell Jobs was born in West Milford, New Jersey, in 1963 to a teacher and a Marine pilot. Her father, the pilot, died in a plane collision when she was 3 years old, and her mother later remarried.

Source: Vogue

After double-majoring in business and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, Powell Jobs worked on Wall Street for Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs before heading west to earn her MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1989.

Source: New York Times

It was during her time at Stanford that Laurene Powell met Steve Jobs. He briefly sat next to her during a lecture, before getting up to address the room as the guest speaker. Still thinking of her afterward, he asked the young Powell out, in the parking lot. She said yes to dinner, and they were together from then on.

Sources: The New York Times, International Business Times