Rihanna has been on the rise for some time now, with chart topping hits for over a decade. She went from a good girl with a squeaky clean image, to being a “bad gal” with a super edgy style and persona. While she was at the height of her music career, she made one of the best career moves a music artist can make, if they are savvy enough to effectively pull it off. She branched out into other venures to create additional revenue streams, and started her makeup line called Fenty Beauty, as well as created the Savage x Fenty lingerie line. Now, at the age of just 33 years old, Rihanna is officially a billionaire. This is an astounding feat for such a young person, but Rihanna has successfully transformed herself into a major mogul of business and enterprise. How exactly did Rihanna accomplish such an impressive and rare goal, and how does her brand stand out from others making it such a lucrative business model? Read on to find out more about Rihanna’s success and how she is now officially a billionaire at the age of 33.
It has been awhile since Rihanna focused on her music, with it being five years now since she released her album “Anti.” That album spent 63 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts, which made it the perfect time for Rihanna to branch off into what would become two of her greatest revenue creating ventures: beauty and fashion. The music artist started Fenty Beauty back in September of 2017. And she came full force with her initial launch, with the brand launching in over 17 countries and 1600 different stores worldwide. She went on to launch Savage x Fenty in 2018, which is a lingerie line created in partnership with TechStyle Fashion Group. She has 50 percent controlling interest in Fenty Beauty and owns 30 percent of Savage x Fenty. Other key investors of the lingerie brand are rapper and mogul Jay Z and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.
One of the key factors that sets Rihanna’s beauty and fashions brands apart is inclusivity. Many brands targeted to women are geared towards perpetuating unrealistic and dangerous standards of beauty. What Rihanna’s brands emphasize is inclusion and love of self, and accepting, even celebrating, the many different variations in size, shape, and skin tone. This has made her brands that much more attractive to a large demographic of buyers, and has worked wonders for her bottom line.
“She was one of the first brands that came out and said ‘I want to speak to all of those different people,'” Shannon Coyne of Blustock Advisors told Forbes. “A lot of women felt there were no lines out there that catered to their skin tone. It was light, medium, medium dark, dark. We all know that’s not reality.”
Back in 2018, Fenty beauty was generating upwards of $550 million in annual revenue. That is more revenue than big brands created by Kyler Jenner, Jessica Alba and Kim Kardashian too. Forbes has estimated that just Fenty Beauty is estimated at a $2.8 billion net worth. And Savage x Fenty raised nearly $115 million after receiving a $1 billion valuation back in February.
“I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world,” Rihanna said once of finding success. Her ascension to success, and ability to stay humble and related during such super stardom, is a great inspiration to anyone looking for a role model in the entertainment industry or in entrepreneurship.
