Elisabeth DeLuca & family

Elisabeth DeLuca is the widow of Subway cofounder Fred DeLuca, who started the sandwich shop with his family friend Peter Buck in 1965. She inherited his half of the restaurant chain, which is one of the largest in the world, when he died from leukemia in 2015. She and the Buck family sold Subway to private equity firm Roark Capital, the owner of Dunkin' and Arby's, in a deal worth more than $9 billion in 2024. Since inheriting the fortune, DeLuca has mostly kept a low profile though she oversees two family charitable foundations with more than $1 billion of assets. She is one of a group of five billionaires who spent $500 million in 2024 to bankroll Arena BioWorks, a startup geared toward quickly developing new drugs.