Larry Ellison and Barbara Boothe divorced after 3 years of marriage. The settlement was reportedly about $68M. Full timeline and prenup facts inside.
Figures are reported estimates. Last updated Oct 2026.
The Oracle co-founder's second divorce, before his fortune really exploded.
Larry Ellison, the co-founder of the software company Oracle, and Barbara Boothe, a former Oracle employee, married in 1983, when the company was still young and Ellison was not yet a billionaire. Boothe worked in the company's early days, and the couple's relationship was bound up with the start-up culture of Silicon Valley. The marriage was short and produced no children, but it took place at a pivotal moment for Oracle, which went public in 1986 and began a rise that would make Ellison one of the richest people in the world.
Ellison's wealth came from Oracle, which he co-founded in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, building on the idea of a commercial relational database. The company grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s and became one of the largest software firms in the world. Ellison held a very large share of Oracle stock, which grew in value for decades. He also invested in sailing, real estate and other businesses, and he later became a major investor in Tesla and the owner of most of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.
The couple married in 1983 and divorced in 1986, a marriage of about three years. The divorce coincided with Oracle's initial public offering in March 1986, which turned Ellison's shareholding into a visible, valuable asset. He went on to marry three more times, including to the novelist Melanie Craft in 2003, a marriage that ended in 2010, and later to Jolin Zhu in 2024, according to reports.
Reports said that Boothe received a settlement of around $68 million, though this figure is not well documented and should be taken as an estimate. The amount would be large for a three-year marriage, and it is typically explained by the rising value of Oracle shares as the company went public. Neither party has disclosed details of the agreement, and there is little reliable public information about its terms.
If the figure is accurate, it reflects the dramatic increase in the value of Ellison's Oracle shares as the company matured. California treats the increase in value of a business during a marriage as community property, and Ellison's stock was worth far more by the time of the divorce than at the time of the wedding. This is the same logic that made the Spielberg and Irving settlement so high relative to the length of the marriage.
Ellison kept control of Oracle and held his stake through decades of growth. The company became a leader in enterprise software and cloud computing, and Ellison served as chief executive until 2014 and then as chief technology officer and executive chairman. His fortune later made him one of the three wealthiest people on earth at times. The early settlement, whatever its size, had no lasting effect on his control of the company.
The Ellison case is an early example of a technology-industry divorce, and it prefigures larger cases such as that of Bill and Melinda Gates. It is notable for the short marriage and the reported scale of the payout. Compared with Jeff Bezos's divorce from MacKenzie Scott, in which a share of Amazon passed to the spouse, the Ellison case was relatively small and little documented.
Ellison was married four or five times, depending on which reports are counted, and has been known for his love of sailing, having funded the America's Cup-winning team Oracle Team USA. He bought most of the island of Lanai in Hawaii in 2012. He dropped out of university twice. The $68 million sum is a reported estimate and not an established fact.
Barbara Boothe's reported settlement was about $68 million.
They married in 1983 and divorced in 1986, a marriage of roughly 3 years.
No prenuptial agreement was reported.
Yes, the family is reported to include 2 children.
Reported assets include: Oracle stock, Silicon Valley real estate, cash.
If the figure is accurate, it reflects the dramatic increase in the value of Ellison's Oracle shares as the company matured. California treats the increase in value of a business during a marriage as community property, and Ellison's stock was worth far more by the time of the divorce than at the time of the wedding.