"Secretive" 24-year-old is world's youngest billionaire

The world's youngest billionaire is 24-year-old Perenna Kei Hoi-ting, according to the latest Forbes list. According to the magazine, she's worth $1.3 billion.

Described by the South China Morning Post as "secretive," Kei is also known as Ji Peili and came about her money the old fashioned way: She inherited it.

Her father, Ji Haipeng, is CEO and chairman of Logan Property Holdings, headquartered in Shenzhen, a city in southern China. The company went public with an initial valuation of $1.17 billion on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late last December. In 2012, according to the company's prospectus, Logan Property had annual revenues of about $1.1 billion.

Although Ji, who is 47, is the boss, Kei owns a reported 85 percent stake through a series of companies and a family trust. She's a non-executive director with a bachelor's degree in economics and finance from the University of London.

According to Forbes, wealthy Chinese often use more than one identity to conceal their net worth or to avoid publicity.

China has become a breeding ground for billionaires, according to the South China Morning Post. Not counting 45 billionaires in Hong Kong, China had the second largest number of representatives on the Forbes list, with the U.S. in first place. There are 42 new women on the list, Kei being one of them. The richest woman in the world is Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton.

Kei displaced Dustin Moskovitz, formerly Facebook's third employee, as the youngest on the list. However, she still didn't reset the world record of early massive wealth. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg still retains holds that honor, as he joined the list in 2008 with an estimated worth of $1.5 billion when he was only 23.