By the Business & Philanthropy Forum · Published 13 September 2026

One signed the Giving Pledge and committed half her wealth. One gave A$30 million to the university she attended herself. Seven women across Asia each built the vehicle their money moves through.

They are running the institutions, not only funding them. The women directing significant philanthropic capital across Asia tend to hold the chair, sign the pledge and design the vehicle, and several of the largest commitments in the region in the past decade have come from women giving through foundations they built themselves.

There is no authoritative ranking of Asian women philanthropists, and no reliable public register of individual giving in most of the region. What follows is not a ranking. It is seven women whose work is documented at a primary source. The first three spoke to the Business & Philanthropy Forum directly, and the four that follow are documented through their own foundations and the institutions receiving the money.

In short: Women leading philanthropy in Asia work through three routes: signed pledges backed by technology platforms, foundations making single large commitments to education and conservation, and founder-led organisations built to change one measurable outcome. Education and women in science are the most common destinations. The most distinctive current thread is that the region’s technology-platform philanthropists are moving into artificial intelligence as a funded field rather than as an internal tool.

The seven, at a glance

Who Platform or vehicle On the record
Madhura DasGupta Sinha Aspire For Her 750,000 women supported, working toward 10 million by 2030
Radhika Bajoria Radically Yours Chapters in Singapore, London, Sweden and India
Poppy Zidan Chen Sustainability across economics, policy and technology Names the shortage of reliable data as the binding constraint
Rohini Nilekani Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Giving Pledge 2017, half of wealth; INR 100 crore to NIMHANS and NCBS
Solina Chau H.S. Chau Foundation A$30 million to UNSW Sydney, November 2025
He Qiaonv Beijing Qiaonyu Foundation US$20 million over ten years from October 2017, big cat conservation
Ho Ching Temasek Trust Endowment model: returns fund the giving rather than a fixed annual budget

Madhura DasGupta Sinha, India

Madhura DasGupta Sinha spent 25 years as a banker before founding Aspire For Her. She started from a single figure: women contribute 18 per cent of India’s economic output. She treats that as an opportunity rather than a shortfall.

Aspire For Her set out to bring one million women into the workforce by 2025, had supported 750,000 at the time of the interview, and is working toward 10 million by 2030. The structure is three pillars, employment, entrepreneurship and education; 400 mentors providing one-to-one and group guidance; and 24 communities segmented by career stage rather than by cause, covering college students, early-career professionals, senior leaders and women returning after a break.

“Our mission is clear: to bring 1 million women into the workforce by 2025. We are on track, with 750,000 women already supported, and we aim to reach 10 million by 2030. Our focus is on creating financially independent women by motivating them to stay in the workforce. We leverage the power of communities and networks to support this mission.”

Her assessment of the hardest part is not funding. It is the assumption, held by women as well as men, that financial independence for women is optional.

Radhika Bajoria, India

Radhika Bajoria founded Radically Yours, a cross-border investment platform supporting firms led by women, with chapters in Singapore, London, Sweden and India.

Her observation about the source of capital is the one most relevant to a family office. She prioritises ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices over conventional venture and private equity firms, because that capital is more patient, more flexible and more willing to back enterprises with a social return, which suits founders building for durable returns rather than rapid expansion.

For a family already weighing philanthropy against impact investing, that is a practical statement about where family capital holds an advantage over institutional capital.

Poppy Zidan Chen

Poppy Zidan Chen is a next-generation leader working on sustainability across economics, policy and technology, and one of the people inheriting a share of the estimated US$2.5 trillion in family wealth passing to the next generation across Asia by 2030.

Her assessment of what limits progress is specific and unusual for someone at her career stage: the shortage of reliable, accessible data across sustainability, reskilling and mental health, which makes informed policy difficult to design. She treats artificial intelligence as a tool to amplify impact rather than as a cause in itself, and puts cross-sector partnership ahead of single-organisation effort.

Rohini Nilekani, India

The largest documented commitment on this list. Rohini Nilekani signed the Giving Pledge in 2017 with Nandan Nilekani, committing half their wealth.

What makes the pledge unusual is what the letter commits the money to. Rather than naming causes, it names an architecture: “societal platforms”, which the letter defines as “open, technology-enabled ecosystems or nurturing networks” designed for co-creation and participation by state institutions, entrepreneurs, nonprofits and citizens. The letter describes the ambition as a public good built from “a combination of high technology, high collaboration and high touch”.

She founded Arghyam in 2001 for water and sanitation, Akshara Foundation in 2000 and Pratham Books in 2004, and co-founded EkStep, whose open-source digital infrastructure Sunbird is released under an MIT licence. Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies has granted INR 100 crore to NIMHANS and NCBS for research into five major mental health conditions.

For a family office, the transferable idea is the platform itself: fund the infrastructure that many organisations build on, rather than funding organisations one at a time.

Solina Chau, Hong Kong

The most recent large commitment. In November 2025 the H.S. Chau Foundation gave A$30 million to UNSW Sydney to establish H.S. Chau College, a residential college for women studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Construction begins in 2027 and the college is expected to open in 2030. It is the largest philanthropic gift UNSW has received for student accommodation.

Chau, co-founder of Horizons Ventures, studied at UNSW herself. On the gift she said: “Studying at UNSW was a pivotal moment in my life. I gained insights that guided my life, especially my quests and perspectives in business, for which I am profoundly grateful.”

The structure is worth noting: not a scholarship fund but a building, which fixes the intervention in place for decades and makes the commitment difficult to reverse.

He Qiaonv, China

The region’s most prominent conservation funder. Founder and chairman of Beijing Oriental Landscape and Ecology, she established the Beijing Qiaonyu Foundation and in October 2017 committed US$20 million over ten years to big cat conservation in China and internationally, in partnership with Panthera and Oxford University’s WildCRU. The commitment included US$1 million for snow leopard conservation in China, US$1 million for African lion conservation, and a wildlife management training programme for Chinese conservationists.

The training component is the part most often overlooked. Funding the specialists as well as the programme is what allows a foreign-funded conservation effort to continue without the funder present.

Ho Ching, Singapore

Chairman of Temasek Trust, which describes itself as operating through the Temasek Trust Collective, an ecosystem of organisations working across four impact areas: Planet, People, Peace and Progress. The Trust generates returns to fund its philanthropic activity rather than distributing a fixed annual budget.

This is the endowment model at institutional scale, and it is the closest regional reference point for a family considering whether to spend down or to build a perpetual vehicle.

Where this money is going into AI

The AI thread on this list is not a technology preference. It is a funding destination, and it runs through the same women.

Funded as infrastructure. EkStep Foundation, which Rohini Nilekani co-founded, runs People+AI, an initiative built to reduce friction in population-scale AI adoption in India. Its stated approach applies digital public infrastructure thinking to AI systems, with safe design and multilingual access as founding principles, across agriculture, climate, law, healthcare, education and justice. That is philanthropic money funding the adoption layer of a technology, which is a different act from a foundation using AI in its own operations.

Funded as capability. Aspire For Her runs a community named Tech4Her dedicated to upskilling women in technology, one of its 24 communities. Solina Chau’s UNSW college is directed specifically at women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Both are the same wager placed at different ends: put women into the technical fields before deciding what the technology should do.

Already operating in the region. The United Nations reported in December 2024 on AI deployments serving women across Southeast Asia. The UN Population Fund’s SoSafe platform in Thailand is accessible to 600,000 users across 14 pilot provinces and has channelled more than 1,000 reports of domestic violence to authorities. The International Labour Organization plans to scale AI-enabled coaching to at least 15,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the Philippines over three years, and reports that chatbot coaching reduced daily social media work for coconut entrepreneurs from several hours to 10 to 20 minutes. The UN Development Programme runs a social innovation platform in Indonesia.

Which means a funder entering this field is not funding a pilot concept. The deployments exist, they have user numbers, and the constraint Poppy Zidan Chen identifies, the shortage of reliable data, is the thing philanthropic capital is best placed to pay for, because nobody else will.

What the seven have in common

Pattern across the list What to do with it
Each built or chairs the vehicle rather than donating into someone else’s Decide early whether you are funding an institution or founding one; the second is a career, not a grant
Education and women in science are the most frequent destinations If entering these fields, look for the unfunded layer rather than the popular one, since the popular layer already has capital
The largest commitments fund infrastructure that others build on Ask what your grant makes possible for organisations you will never meet
Training and capability sit alongside the programme in the durable commitments Budget for the specialists as well as the activity, or the work stops when you do
Several commitments are fixed in buildings or endowments Consider what makes a commitment difficult to reverse when attention moves elsewhere
Documentation is scarce across the region Publish what you fund; the absence of a public record is why this list is short

Questions about philanthropy in Asia

Who is the most famous female philanthropist?

Internationally the question returns American names, which is part of why the Asian field is easy to overlook. Within Asia, recognition attaches to institutions more than to individuals. By documented commitment, Rohini Nilekani in India is the most prominent name on the public record, as a Giving Pledge signatory since 2017.

Who are the most influential women in Asia?

In philanthropy specifically, influence sits with the women who built or chair the vehicle. Rohini Nilekani in India, Solina Chau in Hong Kong, He Qiaonv in China and Ho Ching in Singapore each direct capital through an institution they founded or lead.

Who are the top philanthropists in Singapore?

No authoritative public ranking exists, since individual giving in Singapore is not reported in a form that would support one. At institutional level, Ho Ching chairs Temasek Trust. Most private giving in Singapore is organised through family offices and their associated foundations, and is not disclosed.

Who is the most generous woman in the world?

Any answer depends on whether generosity is measured by amount, by proportion of wealth or by time committed. Amounts given by private individuals across most of Asia are undisclosed, so no regional comparison on that basis is possible. Comparing what each vehicle is designed to do is more informative than comparing sums.

Where to start

If you are deciding how to organise your own giving, take one lesson from each kind of entry on this list. From the founder-led organisations: pick one measurable outcome and stay with it long enough to move it. From the largest commitments: fund the layer that other organisations build on, because that is what makes a fixed sum keep working after it is spent.

Then decide your position on AI deliberately rather than by default. The choice is between funding it as a field, as Rohini Nilekani’s foundation does through People+AI, funding the people who will work in it, as Solina Chau and Aspire For Her do, or using it as a tool inside your own giving, which is what most funders will do without ever making a decision about it. The first two are philanthropy. The third is administration.

Before you move on

  • Of the seven, whose entry point most resembles your own: a founder-led organisation, a pledge, a foundation, or an endowment?
  • Are you funding a cause, or building an architecture other people can use?
  • If you fund specialists as well as the work, does your budget allow for training the people who deliver it?
  • Spend down or build perpetual: has your family actually decided, or defaulted?

One thing to do this week. Pick the one entry on this list closest to your own situation and write down the single thing you would copy from it.

Sources

Related: Family philanthropy in Asia: how giving actually works and What do next-generation philanthropists in Asia do differently?

The Business & Philanthropy Forum publishes interviews with the women building these institutions across Asia.

The Business & Philanthropy Forum 2026 runs 6 to 7 November at Shangri-La Singapore.

Two days with the families, family offices and foundations making these decisions, rather than reading about them afterwards. Reserve a place, or read the interviews first.