Zhang Xin & family (張欣夫婦)

Age: 45

2011 net worth (US$): 3.3 billion

2010 net worth (US$): 3.1 billion

General ranking: 16

Company: SOHO China

Headquarters: Beijing

Title: CEO

Main focus: Real estate

Zhang Xin founded SOHO China with her husband, Pan Shiyi, with whom she shares 60 percent of shares in it. She moved to Hong Kong with her mother when she was still a child and began working in a textile factory at 14. She later went to university in the UK, receiving her master's degree in development economics at Cambridge University in 1992. She then went on to work for international firms, including Goldman Sachs and Travelers Group.

After they married, Zhang and Pan launched SOHO China in Beijing in 1995. The company is famous for a series of property project in Beijing's CBD district, such as Jianwai SOHO and Chaowai SOHO, as well as the globally famed avant-garde ones-Commune by the Great Wall and Bo'ao Kempinski Hotel in Hainan. Through her meticulous operation, the company went public in Hong Kong in 2007, cracking the pressure from capital shortage faced by the company at that time. Zhang, with advantages complementing her husband, is playing a more and more important role in the company's capital operation.