Beate Heister

Heister was born in 1951 in Essen and lives in Neuss, Germany.^[2][6] She is married to entrepreneur Peter Heister, who is related to the Werhahn family and was the former head of Aldi South.^[6] They have six children.^[3][6][7]

She is "notoriously reclusive".^{[8][9][10][11][12]} In a 2014 feature article on the Albrecht family, Manager Magazin compared Beate to her father Karl Albrecht, saying that she resembled him "especially in her sometimes uncompromising hardness".^[6]

Heister controls half of Aldi South, which operates more than 6,000 stores in southern Germany, the US, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and many other countries.^[2] She, her husband Peter, and their son Peter Max Heister, all sit on Aldi's advisory board.^[3][13] Her son Christian sits on the board of directors.^[2] As of 2021, Heister remained active as a board member of the Siepmann Foundation, which takes its name from the maiden name of her paternal grandmother.^[5]