Yang Huiyan (楊惠妍)

 Company: Country Garden Holdings (碧桂園集團)

Headquarters: Guangdong

Main focus: Real estate

Title: Vice-chairwoman of the board

Age: 31

2011 Rank: N/A

At 31, Yang Huiyan is the youngest person among the current Chinese billionaires. One year after graduating from Ohio State University in the United States in 2004, Yang inherited 70 percent of shares in Country Garden from her father, Yang Kwok Keung, who founded the company in 1997. After the company went public in 2007, the inheritance catapulted her to the top of Forbes' China Rich List that year, boasting a net worth of US$16.2 billion- which also made her the wealthiest woman in Asia.

Though a so-called rich second-generation member, Yang is seemingly less spoiled than her peers and aspires to gain social recognition through her own efforts. In March 2012, Yang was appointed as vice chairwoman of the board. In August of this year, the company reported that its sales revenues in H1 2012 had increased by 7.2 percent year-on-year. In October, Yang ranked 9th on the Forbes' 2012 China Rich List with a net worth of US$4.4 billion.