Elisabeth DeLuca

Elisabeth DeLuca debuted on the Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list in early April 2023. DeLuca, who has one son, inherited her late husband’s 50% stake in the restaurant giant. With her family, she is estimated to be worth as much as $8 billion, after subtracting disclosed charitable gifts and calculating investment returns on the Subway royalties. She previously worked at Doctors Associates, mainly writing operations manuals before retiring in 2004, began donating money almost immediately after her husband died. In the first five years after his death, she donated nearly $450 million to the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation, averaging around $90 million a year, according to a review of the foundation’s tax filings. Elisabeth DeLuca is listed as the foundation’s president, director and secretary, while Kevin Byrne was named its CEO in March 2022. Byrne previously spent nearly two decades at the foundation started by the family of Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. DeLuca also quietly incorporated her own foundation, the Elisabeth DeLuca Foundation, headquartered in Pompano Beach, Florida, in December 2020. A former nurse, DeLuca and her son Jonathan inherited the fortune including a stake in the business and billions in cash. Then in August 2023 , just six weeks before her record-breaking $40 million gift to UConn became public, she and the family of deceased Subway cofounder Peter Buck agreed to sell the sandwich chain to private equity firm Roark Capital in a $9.7 billion deal that will put another estimated $3.4 billion in cash into her family’s pocket. While Elisabeth DeLuca is worth an estimated $8.2 billion she’s far from a household name and there are just a handful of photos of her online. Behind the scenes, DeLuca has quietly been forging a legacy separate from Subway and from that of her late husband – largely through giving away the fortune he built.