Robyn Rihanna Fenty, the Barbadian singer, actress, fashion designer, businesswoman, award-winning, chart-topping artist, just added another title to her repertoire: ‘Billionaire’. According to Forbes Rihanna is now worth $1.7 billion, making her the wealthiest female musician in the world and second only to Oprah Winfrey as the richest female entertainer. But it’s not her music that’s made her so wealthy. The bulk of her fortune (an estimated $1.4 billion) comes from the value of Fenty Beauty, of which Forbes can now confirm she owns 50%. Much of the rest lies in her stake in her lingerie company, Savage x Fenty, worth an estimated $270 million, and her earnings from her career as a chart-topping musician and actress.
The singer also has 101 million followers on Instagram and 102.5 million on Twitter. Futrthermore, she is also the most successful beauty entrepreneur to do so. Fenty Beauty, is a 50-50 joint venture with French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (run by Bernard Arnault, the world’s second-richest person), launched in 2017 with the goal of inclusivity. It has a diverse range of products; there are upto 50 different shades of foundation available, including harder-to-find darker shades for women of color—and are modeled in its advertising by an equally diverse group of people.
“The majority of her $1.7 billion estimated net worth is not from singing but from cosmetics,” said Forbes editor Kerry Dolan “From a super-successful cosmetics line which, when it was launched, drew lots of praise because there were something, like, more than 40 shades for all range of skin tones, which was something that at the time, not very many cosmetics lines had been that inclusive,” Kerry Dolan said.
By 2018, its first full calendar year, the line was bringing in more than $550 million in annual revenues, according to LVMH, beating out other celebrity-founded brands like Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics, Kim Kardashian West’s KKW Beauty and Jessica Alba’s Honest Co.
Shannon Coyne, cofounder of consumer products consultancy Bluestock Advisors said, “A lot of women felt there were no lines out there that catered to their skin tone. It was light, medium, medium dark, dark,” she added, “We all know that’s not reality. She was one of the first brands that came out and said, ‘I want to speak to all of those different people’.”
Fenty Beauty isn’t Rihanna’s only billion-dollar brand. In February her lingerie line Savage x Fenty raised $115 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. The company, launched in 2018 is a joint venture with TechStyle Fashion Group, counts blue-chip investors like Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners and private equity firm L. Catterton (in which Bernard Arnault is an investor) as shareholders. Rihanna maintains a 30% ownership stake, Forbes estimates.
“Makeup is there for you to play with. It’s there for you to have fun with. It should never feel like pressure, and it should never feel like a uniform,” Rihanna said in a quote on the Fenty Beauty website.
On the personal front, Rihanna is famously dating long-time friend and fellow musician A$ap Rocky. In an interview with GQ back in May, Rocky revealed that he’s been dating the ‘Can’t Remember to Forget You’ singer. While speaking about Rihanna, the rapper said she’s “The love of my life,” he told GQ. “My lady.” “[Relationships are] so much better when you got the One,” he added. “She amounts to probably, like, a million of the other ones.” “I think when you know, you know. She’s the One,” he added. He continued that he’s “comfortable embracing monogamy.”
