Wu Yajun (吳亞軍)

 Company: Longfor Properties (龍湖地產公司)

Headquarters: Beijing

Main focus: Real estate

Title: Chairwoman

Age: 48

2011 Rank: 8

Although suffering a 10 percent decline in net wealth, Wu Yajun remains China's richest women in 2012 with assets of US$6 billion. After graduating from Northwestern Polytechnic University in 1984, Wu worked as a mechanical engineer, media reporter and editor until 1993, at which time she went into property development.

In 1995, Wu founded Longfor Properties in her native Chongqing. Since then, she has helped Longfor to develop from a small company into a famous Chinese business empire. In 2009, the company went public in Hong Kong; in 2010, its sales revenues surged by 81 percent from the previous year to reach US$4.9 billion. Till June 2012, Longfor's sales volume achieved 17.46 billion yuan (US$2.79 billion), and its return on equity reached 16.3 percent.