Entertainment's Highest Top Ten Earning Women List

Entertainment's Highest-Earning Women

The ten ladies who top our list of Entertainment's Highest-Earning Women earned a total $739 million between May 2010 and May 2011. To compile our list of estimates we talked to agents, managers, lawyers and other folks in the know. Earning reflect income during the time period. Taxes and things like agent and manager fees were not deducted.

Oprah Winfrey:$290 million 

Winfrey beats her closest earning competitor on our list by a whopping $200 million. But with her show ending, how long will the queen of talk be able to maintain those kinds of earnings? Her cable network, OWN, has yet to take off.

 Lady Gaga:$90 million

Lady Gaga topped our Celebrity 100 this year (which measures money AND fame) but she earned a full $200 million less than Oprah. Gaga will have to stay relevant if she's going to continue to rank at the top of our lists.

 

Bethenny Frankel: $55 million 

The reality star banked big bucks over the past year with a savvy sale of Skinny Girl drinks to Fortune Brands. Frankel is planning to expand her brand with rumors flying about a possible talk show.

Gisele Bundchen: $45 million

The supermodel went back to work just weeks after giving birth to her first son with husband Tom Brady. In addition to her modeling fees, Bundchen earns big from endorsement deals and Gisele for Ipanema.

Ellen DeGeneres:$45 million
DeGeneres is more than just a talk show host. She owns part of a pet food company called Halo and she recently started her own record label, Eleveneleven.

Judge Judy Sheindlin:$45 million

Judge Judy may be more under-the-radar than Oprah Winfrey but her daytime show used to regularly beat the queen of talk in ratings. With Winfrey gone, look for Sheindlin's to be the syndicated show to beat.

Taylor Swift:$45 million
Swift may only be 21 but she's a force to be reckoned with in the music industry. Her latest album, Speak Now, sold five million copies globally.

Katy Perry:$44 million
Perry's second studio album, Teenage Dream, has had four singles hit the Billboard No. 1 spot so far but Perry isn't just earning from her music. She voiced Smurfette in the recent Smurfs movie and she has a best-selling perfume.

Beyonce Knowles:$35 million
The 30-year-old singer just announced that she is expecting her first baby with husband Jay-Z. Her latest album 4, sold 310,000 copies in its first week.

Whitney narrate Drug-Filled Months Spent in Pajamas - Oprah Winfrey

Ahead of Oprah Winfrey sat down with Whitney Houston for her first post-"crack is whack" interview, airing Monday, the talk mass required to make sure the resurgent singer was up to the task. Her response? She wanted to "tell the truth" about her troubles, namely her high profile fall from R&B superstar to drug-using punch line.

Winfrey told Access Hollywood the interview "will leave you gasping," adding, "She does not blame her ex-husband Bobby Brown and she takes full responsibility for her engagement in drugs."

"At one point she says, 'I didn't get out of my pajamas for seven months'. She talks about doing the drugs and sitting in the house and the two of them going, 'What are we doing?'"

Oprah Winfrey on Jay-Z

Oprah interviewed Jay-Z earlier this summer for the October issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, to be released September 15.

The Queen of Talk got the hip-hop mogul to open up about his days as a 13-year-old crack dealer, his use of the N-word, and how he’d kept his wedding to Beyonce a secret.