Arianna Huffington Net Worth 2024: Politics, The Post, and Thriving with $100 Million

Co-founding the Huffington Post made Arianna Huffington a powerhouse in business and journalism. The Greek American author and politician is often referred to as one of the most powerful women worldwide.

In 2024, Arianna Huffington’s net worth has reached $100 million.

She started her journey following in the footsteps of her parents and writing her first book. Later on, she would dabble in diverse business ventures, become very active in politics, and live a public life.

Keep reading to learn the story of Huffington’s wealth accumulation.

Arianna Huffington’s Net Worth: Full Breakdown

Arianna Huffington’s net worth is not easy to pin down, especially since details on some of the key factors toward the growth of her wealth haven’t been publicly disclosed, including her book earnings and stake in Thrive Global.

Even so, we were able to find sufficient information to give you a solid breakdown of the main assets that make up her fortune:

Latest News & Controversies (2024)

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post and founder of Thrive Global, continues to champion health, wellness, and sustainable leadership. In 2024, Huffington’s Thrive Global expanded its wellness platform, incorporating AI-driven tools to enhance workplace well-being. Her focus on reducing burnout through mindfulness and sleep health has made her a pivotal figure in corporate wellness.

Controversies:

Though Huffington’s career has been largely successful, she has faced plagiarism accusations in the past. More recently, her strong advocacy for workplace well-being has faced critique for being difficult to implement at scale, particularly in high-pressure corporate environments. These challenges are raised by skeptics questioning whether her solutions adequately address the root causes of burnout in corporate settings​

6 Fun Facts about Arianna Huffington

1. Family Heritage: Born Ariadnē Anna Stasinopoúlou in Athens, Greece.
2. Cambridge Union: Became the first foreign female president of the Cambridge Union.
3. First Book: Published her first book, The Female Woman, in 1973.
4. Huffington Post: Co-founded The Huffington Post in 2006, which became a major success.
5. Philanthropy: Involved in various charitable endeavors, focusing on health and well-being.
6. Political Involvement: Ran as an independent candidate in the California gubernatorial recall election in 2003.

Early Life and Education

Ariadnē Anna Stasinopoúlou or, as we know her now, Arianna Huffington, was born on July 15, 1950, in Athens, Greece, to father Konstantinos, a journalist and management consultant, and mother Elli, a writer. Not only were her parents both involved in writing, but her sister Agapi is also an author and a speaker. When Arianna was 16 years old, the family moved to the United States.

A Star-Studded Education

After being in the US for a few short years, Ariadnē Anna Stasinopoúlou enrolled at Cambridge University in the UK, where she was elected the Cambridge Union Debate Society president.

She was one of the first female foreign students to take on this role at the university.

In addition to Cambridge, she spent a few semesters studying comparative religion at India’s Visva-Bharati University, but she eventually moved back to the US, where she started dating the author Bernard Levin.

Early Career

She authored her first book while traveling through Europe after her university years and appeared on TV shows with her boyfriend. In 1971, for instance, the couple appeared in an edition of Face the Music together. They traveled to music festivals for the BBC and spent their summers patronizing restaurants in France.

However, when Stasinopoúlou turned 30, she decided she was not happy with her life and wanted to have a family. Since her boyfriend at the time, Bernard Levin, didn’t feel the same, the couple broke up and she moved to New York City.

She told The Guardian in 2012, following Levin’s death.

I left London because I was still in love with him and he didn’t want to get married or have children. I might still be there now if Bernard Levin had married me. You see how life works.

After she moved to New York City, the American columnist worked as the co-host of BBC1’s Saturday Night at the Mill, the late-night talk and entertainment show. However, she remained there for a single month, appearing in five editions before she was dropped from the program and replaced by Jenny Hanley.

Marrying Michael Huffington

In 1985, Ariadnē Anna Stasinopoúlou met Michael Huffington, whom she married a year later. Michael Huffington was a big figure in American political circles and a renowned oil tycoon. After marrying Michael Huffington, Arianna Huffington relocated to Santa Barbara with her new family, where her husband held a US House of Representatives seat.

Arianna and Michael Huffington had two children together. In 1994, Michael ran for a seat in the US Senate against Dianne Feinstein, spending the highest amount on a non-presidential campaign in American history at the time – $28 million. Even so, he ended up losing by 1.9%.

In 1997, the couple divorced and, following their separation, Michael Huffington revealed that he was bisexual and this was the reason for their divorce.

While the settlement was described in media at the time as “multimillion-dollar”, the records of the divorce are sealed and we can’t be sure how much cash or exactly which properties she received.

Arianna Huffington Net Worth: From Authoring Biographies to Building a Million-Dollar Business

As we noted earlier, Arianna Huffington was primarily an author, writing and publishing her first book in the 1970s, back when she was dating Levin.

Her writing career has been incredibly successful, though she has had her fair share of controversies too.

Years after she published her books, Huffington became a respected businesswoman, starting with the founding of Huffington Post. Let’s see how all of this contributed to Huffington’s net worth of millions today.

Authorship

In 1973, Arianna Huffington published her first book, The Female Woman, attacking the women’s liberation movement. She instantly gained notoriety in the literary world, prompting her to write a large number of biographies after this success.

When she married Michael Huffington, she became actively involved in politics and wrote for the Emmy award-winning late-night talk show Politically Incorrect.

Her series of popular biographies and other books include:

• Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (1980)
• Picasso (1988)
• Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America (1988)
• Fourth Instinct” (1994)

• How to Overthrow the Government (2000)
• On Becoming Fearless (2006)
• Third World America (2010)
• Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder (2014)
• The Sleep Revolution (2016)

Claims of Plagiarism

Arianna Huffington’s authorship career was filled with smash hits, but it wasn’t without controversy. She has been accused of plagiarism on several occasions by various researchers and writers.

In 1981, after she published Maria Callas, a biographer suggested that she borrowed from his work to write the book.

The claim was settled out of court that same year, with Gerald Fitzgerald, Callas’ biographer, being paid out in the low five figures, though the exact payment has never been disclosed.

When she published her biography of Pablo Picasso in 1988, titled Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, a University of Virginia art history professor named Lydia Gasman claimed that her work included themes similar to those in her unpublished PhD thesis. She told Maureen Orth, “What she did was steal twenty years of my work” in 1994, but never filed suit and Arianna Huffington denied the allegations.

Founding The Huffington Post

In 2006, Arianna Huffington co-founded The Huffington Post with Andrew Breitbart, Jonah Peretti, and Kenneth Lerer. The business initially worked as an alternative news platform, featuring content from staff writers and voluntary authors.

Interestingly, while Arianna Huffington was strongly affiliated with the Republican Party before the launch of the company, The Huffington Post’s main audience was the Democratic coalition.

The Huffington Post was a major success, growing fast following its launch. In 2012, David Wood, a reporter for The Huffington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize, making it the first commercially run digital media to achieve this award.

The Sale of The Huffington Post

Before the Pulitzer Prize, in 2011 to be precise, the business was struggling.

Eventually, AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million, making Arianna Huffington’s net worth skyrocket in an instant. She assumed the role of editor-in-chief and president of The Huffington Post Media Group as part of the deal and held a 14% stake in the website at the time.

This sale reportedly added $21 million to her net worth, pre-taxation, with $3.4 million in options that would vest over 20 months. Considering that she didn’t invest cash into The Huffington Post at the start, this was a sweet payday for her.

Less than one year into the new corporate marriage, Huffington was searching for a new buyer who would take the business away from AOL. AOL reportedly told her that it would let go of the business if she found a buyer willing to pay $1 billion, which was an exaggerated price that no one was willing to pay.

The relationship between AOL’s Tim Armstrong and Huffington eventually fell apart, especially after several incidents in 2012 involving the company’s new vice president for global strategy, Lauren Kapp. Tim Armstrong blamed Kapp, and Arianna Huffington, by extension, for the scathing Wall Street Journal article about a network of online local news sites owned by AOL.

Leaving The Huffington Post

Eventually, in 2015, Verizon Wireless acquired AOL for $4.4 billion, a transition that made The Huffington Post part of Verizon’s portfolio.

In 2016, Arianna Huffington officially left The Huffington Post, 11 years after co-founding the business with Andrew Breitbart, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti.

The Inspiration for Thrive Global

While some thought the reason for her departure was the new company structure, Huffington shared that she realized she “could not build a company part-time”, since she was strongly focused on health and wellness issues at that moment. She remained politically active but also worked on her books Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, so she decided to launch her new venture, Thrive Global.

Arianna Huffington had been leading the business for two years at that point, working 18-hour days. She was successful, but she had some health problems due to exhaustion, which was another part of the reason why she left the post.

“I was successful by all standards, but I was not successful if I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor of my office,” Huffington told Caroline Modarressy Tehrani, talking about the tumble that left her with a broken cheekbone.

Involvement in Politics

Arianna Huffington became involved in politics starting with her husband’s unsuccessful Senate bid in 1994. She was a strong supporter of causes like the Republican Revolution by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole’s candidacy for president in 1996. She also partnered with Al Franken, the liberal comedian at the center of Comedy Central’s coverage of the presidential election in the US in 1996.

In 1997, Huffington and the writing team of Politically Incorrect were nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety of Music Program.

A year later, Arianna Huffington became even more involved with the Republican Party. She did a weekly radio show called Left, Right & Center in Los Angeles. That same year, Margaret Talbot wrote in The New Yorker’s profile of Huffington:

Most recently, she has cast herself as a kind of Republican Spice Girl – an endearingly ditzy right-wing gal-about-town who is a guilty pleasure for people who know better.

In 2000, she opposed the NATO intervention in Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars, and she co-convened the Shadow Conventions.

Huffington as an Independent Candidate

In 2003, Arianna Huffington was an independent candidate in the recall election of California Governor Gray Davis, describing her candidacy against Arnold Schwarzenegger as the “hybrid versus the Hummer.”

During the campaign, she made major attacks against Schwarzenegger, but she dropped out of the race in September 2003, when she found that just 2% of the population planned to vote for her.

“… it’s also clear that I am not going to win on October 7, [so] I am withdrawing from the race so that I can devote all my time and energy in the remaining week to defeating the recall – and to defeating the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Pete Wilson forces that are trying to use the recall to hijack our state.” – she said.

Huffington’s name remained on the ballot and captured 1% of the vote.

Following her candidacy, Arianna Huffington appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where she announced her endorsement of John Kerry. In 2005, she was a panel speaker during the Los Angeles California Democratic State Convention and spoke at the College Democrats of America Convention in Boston.

Media Presence

During her very public, successful career, Huffington has made countless media appearances. For starters, she was a panelist on the BBC Radio 4 political discussion program titled Any Questions? and on the panel games Face the Music and Call My Bluff.

At one point, she was also the co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program Both Sides Now, working alongside Mary Matalin, a top aide to the George Bush Administration.

Before she founded The Huffington Post, the media mogul hosted her website called AriannaOnline.com. She was also the face behind the website called resignation.com, calling for the resignation of Bill Clinton.

TV Series and Film Appearances

In addition to her TV show appearances and websites, Huffington also appeared in series and films and has been spoofed by actresses in the media. In November 2008, she was part of the cast of the animated series The Cleveland Show, lending her voice to Arianna, the wife of Tim the Bear.

In 2005, she appeared as herself in an episode of How I Met Your Mother. She also played herself in an episode of Family Guy.

She was later played by Tracey Ullman in Tracey Ullman’s comedy series State of the Union and was also played by Michaela Watkins on Saturday Night Life.

Arianna Huffington Net Worth: Other Investments and Assets

Arianna Huffington’s renown as a highly successful businesswoman isn’t just down to her first business, The Huffington Post.

In addition to this, Huffington has founded other companies including Thrive Global, and has served on numerous boards including Global Citizen and Onex.

Let’s take a look at the rest of her investments, activities, and assets.

Board Memberships

Arianna Huffington has served on the board of directors at:

• Uber, until 2019
• Onex Corporation, until at least 2022
• Center for Public Integrity, no date when her tenure ended
• Berggruen Institute
• Gloat

In addition to this, she is a One Young World Counsellor.

Thrive Global

In 2007, after she collapsed due to sleep exhaustion and stress and woke up with a broken cheekbone, Arianna Huffington became strongly passionate about health and well-being, sharing her story about burnout and her desire to make a lifestyle change.

Inspired by this, Huffington founded Thrive Global, a wellness and behavioral change business based in New York City in 2016.

The company became a success almost instantly. Thrive Global surpassed its revenue targets within as little as six weeks and, in November 2017, the business got a valuation of $120 million!

To date, Arianna Huffington is the CEO of Thrive Global.

In 2019, two years after its founding, Thrive Global launched a podcast named “Meditative Story” in partnership with the media company WaitWhat, led by June Cohen and Deron Triff. The podcast combines stories with meditation prompts to offer a mindfulness experience.

Earnings from Thrive Global

While we don’t know how much exactly Arianna Huffington owns of Thrive Global, she most likely holds a majority stake, considering that this is her privately owned business. Thrive Global’s latest funding round was on July 8, 2021, when the company was valued at $700+ million, which adds 100s of millions of dollars to her considerable net worth.

Real Estate Assets

Back in 1997, Huffington spent $4.1 million to buy a Brentford property following her divorce. In 2013, she acquired another property, a Manhattan apartment worth $8.1 million. Her 4,177-square-foot apartment is located in the affluent SoHo neighborhood.

What Can We Learn from Arianna Huffington’s Story?

Arianna Huffington’s journey from a young immigrant to one of the most influential women in journalism, business, and politics offers several valuable lessons.

Despite facing many setbacks and challenges in both her personal and professional life, Huffington has demonstrated remarkable resilience. She adapted to changing circumstances, pivoting from her early career in writing to co-founding The Huffington Post and then launching Thrive Global.

Huffington’s decision to leave a comfortable, most likely highly paid position at The Huffington Post to focus on her health and her wellness venture reflects the importance of prioritizing self-care – as well as making bold decisions when necessary.

She knows that a bit more money isn’t worth sacrificing your health.

Throughout her career, Huffington has displayed an entrepreneurial mindset by seizing opportunities to create and lead different ventures. She has shown a strong ability to spot trends – and capitalize on them to contribute to her financial success.

Finally, Arianna Huffington’s prolific writing career serves as a testament to the power of storytelling.

Over the years, she has shown us what impact sharing one’s voice can have on the world. Her books and articles have provoked thought, challenged norms, and sparked conversations on a wide range of topics from politics and business to wellness and personal growth.

Her early works, including The Female Woman, and her biographies like Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend, were a source of controversies and even accusations of plagiarism. However, Huffington remained undeterred, using the experiences as an opportunity for reflection and growth.