Birgit Rausing is a Swedish art historian and philanthropist, and the widow of Gad Rausing (1922–2000).

In 1944 her father-in-law Ruben Rausing

Ruben Rausing

Ruben Rausing was the founder of the liquid food packaging company Tetra Pak. He was born in Helsingborg, Sweden in 1895. On his death Ruben Rausing was Sweden's richest person.-Early life:...

 (1895–1983) founded Tetra Pak

Tetra Pak

Tetra Pak is a multinational food processing and packaging company of Swedish origin. It was founded in 1951 in Lund, Sweden, by Ruben Rausing. It was Erik Wallenberg who invented the tetrahedral package, today known as Tetra Classic...

, which revolutionized the packaging of liquids such as juices and milk. The company was inherited by his sons Gad and Hans

Hans Rausing

Hans Rausing, KBE, is a Swedish businessman based in the United Kingdom. He made his fortune from his co-inheritance of Tetra Pak , a company founded by his father Ruben Rausing and currently the largest food packaging company in the world...

. In 1996, Gad bought his brother's half of the company. When Gad died in 2000, his wife Birgit and their three children inherited packaging giant Tetra Laval

Tetra Laval

Tetra Laval is a private multinational corporation of Swedish origin, owned by the Rausing family. In the 1980s Tetra Laval relocated its headquarters to Lausanne, Switzerland....

.

Birgit Rausing and her family had an estimated net worth

Net worth

In business, net worth is the total assets minus total outside liabilities of an individual or a company. For a company, this is called shareholders' preference and may be referred to as book value. Net worth is stated as at a particular year in time...

 of US$13.0 billion in 2010. She is the third wealthiest person in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, according to Forbes

Forbes

Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

magazine.