Hetty Green is said to have once visited a restaurant during her lifetime and ordered a steak for 30 cents. Although prices were certainly lower over 100 years ago, they were not that low, which the waiter probably made her understand. In the end, the woman in the black dress ate a toast and a stew and left the restaurant in a rage. That was a bizarre situation in itself. What makes it crazy is that this same woman, who wanted to eat steak for 30 cents, was probably the richest woman - certainly in the USA and possibly in the whole world.

Hetty Green was an exceptional figure during her lifetime from 1834 to 1916. When she died in 1916, her wealth was estimated to be worth over 100 million US dollars, which would be equivalent to billions in today's money. In the book "The Wealthy 100", published in 1996, the authors put the wealth of many rich Americans in relation to their gross national product. At the time of her death, Hetty Green owned 1/498th of the US gross national product, putting her in 36th place - ahead of star investor Warren Buffett.

What is special about Hetty Green, however, is not so much that she was rich, but that she achieved this rise at a time when women played no role on Wall Street or in the financial scene. However, she invested in railroads and mines, lent money to cities such as New York and Chicago and was big in the mortgage trade. She was probably the first female "tycoon" in US history, and all this at a time when rich men like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller dominated the economy.

Hetty Green started to get involved with the stock market at an early age

The Gilded Age was one of ostentation and splendor. Even people who had far less money than Hetty Green built veritable palaces on Fifth Avenue, while she herself lived in a small apartment to which she traveled by subway because she had no car and in which she is said to have eaten cold porridge because it would have been too expensive to reheat. Her business acumen made her rich and powerful, while her thriftiness made her famous. But that's not all.

Hetty Green's life began in 1834 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, when she was still known as Hetty Howland Robinson. Her father, Edward Mott Robinson, was the richest local whaler. He was considered to be very energetic, but did not have particularly good eyesight. So young Hetty Green picked up the newspaper in the morning and read to him and her grandfather about exchange rate wars, bonds and other investments. Her father explained to her what she didn't understand.

She loved money from an early age and did everything she could to avoid spending it. At the age of eight, she opened her first bank account with her pocket money (1.50 US dollars a week), at 13 she took over the bookkeeping of the family empire and at 15, she later said, she knew more about finances than most financiers. Her thriftiness was already far beyond the norm. For example, when she spent a few months in New York, where she danced with Edward VII, the future King of England, among others, her father gave her 1,200 US dollars. She was supposed to stock up on matching outfits. But she bought clothes for 200 US dollars and saved the rest.

Hetty Green inherited the considerable family fortune, estimated at more than six million US dollars, when her father died in 1865, but she was not really allowed to use it. Her father had stipulated that she should only receive a regular alimony payment and no one else trusted her to handle a lot of money. When her aunt died in the same year, she was supposed to receive a share of the million-dollar inheritance, but it was too small for her. She contested the will in court and presented a forged will herself, which was discovered in the course of the proceedings and went down in US legal history. When her cousins tried to prosecute her for the forgery, she fled to London with her husband, Edward Henry Green. She had married the millionaire in 1867 at the age of 33 and would later have two children with him: Ned and Sylvia.

She went down in US judicial history with a dispute

Even before her marriage to Green in 1867, the young entrepreneur made it clear how much her money was worth and had him sign a marriage contract. The wealth were to remain separate. Green was by no means poor. He had made his money trading silk in the Far East, but was considered a speculator in New York. One day, when a bank wanted to collect her husband's losses from her wealth , she grudgingly paid, which she said she never forgave her husband for. Because there was one thing she disliked even more than not receiving money: Losing money that she already had.

Her thriftiness, from steak for 30 cents to cold porridge to even more adventurous embellishments, is the subject of many stories, most of which contain a spark of truth and a lot of exaggeration, as her biographer Charles Slack recorded in his book, which is aptly named "Hetty - The Genius and Madness of America's First Tycoon". However, several biographers and articles agree on what is probably the craziest story: her son had to have part of his leg amputated because she was said to have been too stingy for a good hospital.

Green never squandered her money from her father's alimony, but invested it - doubling it, quadrupling it and so on. She made her first really big deal by buying government bonds with which the US government wanted to finance its war against the renegade southern states. The securities were unpopular, they fell in price, partly because nobody believed in them.

She made a wealth with bonds and mortgages

Green made a wealth, following her rule of thumb: she bought the bonds when panic broke out and they fell, and sold them when they stabilized. She is said to have earned more than one million US dollars within a year. In today's terms, that would be more than 30 million US dollars. Whether on Wall Street or in other businesses: Hetty Green was regarded as a tough and shrewd woman, did not buy large stretches of railroad projects, but rather small, but important sections, which she sold for a lot of money to contrite large investors.

She is said to have had an exact price in her head for every security she held, at which she would buy or sell more. If speculators attacked her, she went on the counterattack and, thanks to her well-filled war chest, bought so many securities that her opponents regularly gave up. If her opponents threatened her, Green was not impressed. But if they came too close to her or became brash, according to several biographies, Green sometimes pulled out a gun and held it to the chest of the cheeky men.

Perhaps the "Witch of Wall Street", as the press dubbed her because of her black dresses, pulled off her greatest prank in 1907, nine years before her death, when she was over 70. Because she realized that many securities on the market were overvalued, she sold a large part of her portfolio and collected her loans, including interest, from her debtors. When the Great Panic of 1907 broke out, she had all her eggs in one basket - and used the money she had raised to go on a big shopping spree afterwards.

Hetty Green's legacy can be found in educational institutions today

Hetty Green died in her home in 1916 after a series of strokes. Contrary to what is often portrayed, her son told the New York Times shortly after her death, she had indeed donated hundreds of dollars here, thousands there, some families had even received a regular income, and she had paid her accountant for much longer than necessary.

Her children inherited the wealth that remained after the tax and used it more than their mother to make a good life for themselves. Her son Ned was considered a collector and apparently married a prostitute, which his mother had prevented during her lifetime. When he died, only Green's daughter Sylvia remained. She had married rich and had her own plans with the money she had amassed. After her death, she bequeathed several hundred million US dollars to universities, colleges and charities.