The mining heiress was 19 when she married John Hancock's father, who later became a taxi driver and would be all but airbrushed from the family narrative. On the other hand, Rinehart described her much older second husband, Harvard-educated tax lawyer Frank Rinehart, as the “finest person I've ever known”.

But, as reported in the Herald yesterday, the book, Gina Rinehart: the Untold Story of the Richest Woman in the World, reveals that Frank Rinehart was convicted of tax fraud and had many secrets in his past.