Until now, it’s been hard to beat Oprah Winfrey. The former queen of daytime talk tops our list of Hollywood’s Highest-Earning Women with $290 million in earnings between May 2010 and May 2011. Winfrey is worth $2.7 billion, by our estimation, ranking her 139th on our list of the 400 richest people in America.
But is her run at the top nearing an end? In May, Winfrey dropped the curtain on her 25-year talk show. The Oprah Winfrey Show accounted for the majority of Winfrey’s earnings. In order to continue earning at the pace she has been on for the past five years, Winfrey will have to make her fledgling cable network, OWN, a success and that’s going to be a challenge.Ratings at the network are dreadful. Since it launched in January, prime-time shows have averaged just 250,000 viewers. New programs like a Rosie O’Donnell hosted chat show will debut this month but the network has a long way to go before advertiser start paying the kind of rates Winfrey was charging for her syndicated show.
Full List: Entertainment’s Highest-Paid Women
While Winfrey works on her new network, other up-and-coming money makers have a chance to push her off of her throne. Lady Gaga ranks second on our list with $90 million. That’s $200 million less than Oprah earned last year but Gaga is incredibly smart about earning money. She’s not afraid to shill products like Virgin Mobile phones in her videos and her network of 14 million Twitter followers crash servers trying to download her singles as soon as they become available. Her latest album, Born This Way, sold 1 million copies in its first week. Gaga will need to keep herself relevant though if she is going to continue earning that way.
Ranking third behind Gaga is reality star Bethenny Frankel with $55 million. Frankel has been a master when it comes to using the world of reality shows to build and sell a brand. She recently sold her Skinnygirl Margarita mix to Fortune Brands for an estimated $100 million. And she’s expanding the brand into food, nutritional supplements and maybe even a talk show.
In a four-way tie for fourth place are supermodel Gisele Bundchen, Taylor Swift, Ellen DeGeneres and Judge Judy Sheindlin with $45 million each.
To compile our estimates we talked to lawyers, agents, producers and other in-the-know folks to get information on earnings between May 2010 and May 2011. Earnings reflect gross income and do not account for things like taxes and manager fees.
Bundchen went back to work quickly after giving birth to her first child last year but even if she hadn’t, she would still be a top earner. Most of her money comes from Gisele for Impanema, a partnership with Brazilian footwear company Grendene. Bundchen also insists on getting paid in Brazilian reals and euros, which helps boost her earnings.
Swift, at only 21, has become a music-industry force to be reckoned with. Her latest album, Speak Now, has sold 5 million copies. She was recently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the female with the most simultaneous hits at once in the top 100 (11).
DeGeneres is the epitome of the new celebrity. Not only does she have her own talk show and lucrative endorsements with the likes of American Express and Vitamin Water, but she also owns part of a pet food company, Halo, and recently started her own record label.
Full List: Entertainment’s Highest-Paid Women
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