Green, Hetty (Henrietta Howland) (1834–1916)

US financier. She was a noted operator on the New York Stock Exchange and invested heavily in real estate. Although the press exaggerated her miserliness – she was dubbed ‘the witch of Wall Street’ – there was no denying her shrewdness and eccentricities. She lived out her later years in cheap lodgings in Hoboken, New Jersey, but died the richest woman in the USA, leaving an estate valued at over $100 million. Green was born Henrietta Howlan Robinson in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She attended a Quaker school and inherited approximately $10 million from her father and aunt. She married Edward Green, a silk trader, with whom she had two children. The couple chose to keep their finances entirely separate.