On Halloween, the mining magnate was photographed at the club in Palm Beach, Florida, wearing a red wide-brimmed hat and a “Drill, Baby, Drill” sign draped around her neck, posing with Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. later, Rinehart was back at Mar-a-Lago – this time in a white ball gown and a Trump brooch – to watch the results of the US presidential election and ultimately celebrate her host’s victory.
The next day, Australia’s richest person landed a coveted interview with Elon Musk, a new influential figure in Trump’s inner circle — and one of only a few dozen people on the planet with more money than her. Rinehart said in a statement that they discussed issues relevant to the US and Australia: freedom of expression and the need to reduce both government waste and national debt.
Rinehart’s enthusiastic embrace of Trump, and her efforts to export many of the MAGA ideals to Australia, is the latest twist in a life marked at various times by belligerence and generosity.
At home in Australia, where Rinehart lives mainly on the west coast in Perth, she is a polarizing figure. The executive chairman of closely held Hancock Prospecting is seen as an icon by many in the mining sector, especially women. She rarely gives interviews, often has bodyguards and is known to be skeptical of outsiders. But she’s also up for a fight.
Rinehart, now 70 years old, became embroiled in court for a decade with her father’s third wife and a former maid over his estate. Rinehart accused her stepmother of being somehow responsible for her father’s death, a claim rejected by the findings of an inquest. She has been embroiled in a protracted legal dispute with two of her four children over their rights to valuable mining assets.
Calculations of Rinehart’s wealth vary. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates her net worth at around $18 billion, while Forbes puts it at around $30 billion.
A spokesperson for Rinehart said she was not available for an interview.
Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, is widely credited with discovering an abundance of iron ore in the Pilbara, a sparsely populated region of Western Australia, in the 1950s. Today, half of the world’s iron ore exports come from that region.
Hancock, a legendary and controversial figure in Australian business, once considered using nuclear bombs as a cheap way to blow up mines in the Outback. His reputation was tarnished by comments that drugs should be used to sterilize some mixed-race indigenous people.
Tensions between Rinehart and her father ran high for a while. In letters between the two that later became public in court, she told him he had become a laughing stock. He called her lazy and vindictive.
Rinehart, who spent part of her childhood on a cattle and sheep station in the Australian Outback, took over Hancock Prospecting after his death in 1992 and built it into Australia’s leading company in terms of turnover. Her interests now include mining, energy, retail, agriculture and real estate.
Rinehart — or Mrs. R, as many of those close to her say — typically shuns bankers and is intimately involved in every deal or investment her company makes, say people who have done business with her. In a rare attempt to attract attention, several years ago she had many of her company’s locomotives and dump trucks painted pink, in tribute to breast cancer patients and research.
It is currently pouring billions into a wide range of bets on energy and crucial minerals, including lithium and rare earths, laying claim to raw materials expected to be in demand as the world decarbonizes and electrifies and the West seeks to diversify supply chains away from China . .
Rinehart began investing in Brazilian Rare Earths, a company that develops a very high-quality deposit, before it went public in Australia late last year. Her assets have been invaluable, says general manager Bernardo da Veiga. Other investors “look at it and say, ‘Well, you know, she’s in there. There must be something going on.’ And it just sets you apart from others.”
She has also single-handedly foiled deals in the mining industry. Last year, Hancock built a nearly 20% stake in Australian lithium company Liontown Resources, thwarting a plan by Charlotte, N.C.-based Albemarle to buy that company.
Now she seems to be becoming more of a beachhead in the US. She took a significant stake in MP Materials, a Nevada-based mining company that develops rare earths from an operation in California, earlier this year and recently increased this to more than 8%.
Rinehart’s ties to the US go back even further. Her second husband, the late Frank Rinehart, was an American lawyer 37 years her senior. They married in Las Vegas and she lived with him and her children in the US for a while in the 1980s. Last year, companies linked to Rinehart’s family were behind two real estate purchases in Florida.
When speaking publicly, Rinehart tends to advocate pro-business policies and has inherited her father’s gift for inciting outrage.
In 2012, she wondered how miners in Australia could compete with those in Africa, where people, she said, were willing to work for less than two Australian dollars a day. Unions called her ‘outrageous and cold-blooded’.
Rinehart has also encouraged Australians to spend less time drinking and socializing, and more time working.
This year she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Atlas Society, which promotes the philosophies of Ayn Rand. In a recorded interview before the awards ceremony, Rinehart said she first read Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” when she was thirteen. “I didn’t shy away from the values that were in that book,” she said.
Those close to her say she is magnanimous. She is known to randomly hand out gifts of 100,000 Australian dollars, approximately $61,300, to employees at Christmas or on her birthday.
She is a major benefactor for Australia’s Olympic athletes, particularly its storied swimming program, and hosted some of the country’s medalists on a luxury glass-top riverboat on the River Seine during this year’s Paris Games. An Australian swimmer almost called her a ‘meter figure’.
Rinehart emerged as a supporter of Trump during his first visit to the White House, toasting his ambition to cut taxes and reduce what he sees as over-regulation — policies she has long campaigned for Down Under.
“I think Gina would view Donald Trump as what the world has been waiting for,” said Michael Yabsley, a former liberal politician who worked for Rinehart in the late 1990s.
On election night this year, Rinehart sat with Toni Holt Kramer, founder of Trumpettes USA. Together they watched the results pour in. Nigel Farage, the British Brexit cheerleader, and former Australian Liberal Party vice-president Teena McQueen were also with Rinehart.
Rinehart and Holt Kramer met around 2018, during Trump’s first term in the White House. Rinehart came over for her husband’s birthday party a few years ago and they saw each other in Palm Beach. “She is a unique woman who sees things not as they are – as they should be,” Holt Kramer said. “She’s very bold and very, very brave and very, very strong, and she really wants the best for Australia. .”
In comments sent to several media outlets after the election, Rinehart congratulated Trump, saying: “I really hope Australia watches and learns when they see that cutting the government tape, cutting taxes and cutting government waste uplifts and raises the standard of living.”
Where the two disagree is on rates. Rinehart has emphasized her own long-standing opposition to tariffs, while Trump has proposed aggressively raising them.
She has long warned of dark days ahead for Australia unless it cuts taxes and cuts red tape to make it easier for businesses to operate. Australia, where voting is compulsory, will hold its own national elections next year.
“In the US, the super-rich are celebrated. The American Dream champions success stories of talent, drive and immigration,” said Richard Gannon, a resources industry consultant and former investment banker. “This resonates with Ms. Rinehart because it is also her own story of her family history.”
Katherine Clarke contributed to this article.