Photo Credit: Rihanna/Instagram
Rihanna has been harrassed for years about putting out new music but has instead chosen to focus on her cosmetics line. And given her new title she has as the country’s youngest self-made billionaire, it seems that time was well spent and quite justified. She originally became a billionaire last summer and now after 3 years of making Forbes’ list of richest self-made women, she’s now the only one under 40. Starting with her music career, she’s parlayed into the beauty industry with Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin and Savage X Fenty which helped inch her net worth up into the stratosphere.
Just this past March she was reported to be working on an IPO for her Savage X Fenty lingerie line where it could be valued at $3 billion, a company she owns 30% of. She owns half of Fenty Beauty which brought in $550 million in revenue in 2020. But it isn’t just about the money for Rihanna. She told the New Times’ T Magazine in 2019 that reaching financial milestones was “not going to stop me from working.”
And she wants to give money away to causes near and dear to her heart as well. She said “My money is not for me; it’s always the thought that I can help someone else,” she said. “The world can really make you believe that the wrong things are priority, and it makes you really miss the core of life, what it means to be alive.”
And back to the list. Kylie Jenner is on at as the youngest non-billionaire with a $600 million net worth. As for her being labeled self-made, I think that is debatable. Even Kim Kardashian being on the list at 41 did have name recognition from both her mom and err, other mom. Rihanna literally did have to “get it out the mud” as they say, doing it all on her own. And we’re proud of her. The Barbadian beauty who very well could have been a fly by night talent has turned herself into an empire and at a young age at that, mind you without selling out. She owes her success to the inclusivity she’s built her brands on.
