The younger self-made billionaire woman in the U.S. didn’t develop in a Manhattan high rise or the Hollywood Hills. Rihanna made her money instead through her music and business ventures.
The singer and CEO of Fenty Beauty, who is 34 years old, has been on Forbes’ annual listing of America’s richest self-made women for the past three years. She came in at 21 overall and is the only billionaire on the list younger than 40. Rihanna’s music career has helped her earn some of her $1.4 billion fortunes. Most of it comes from her three retail companies, Fenty Skin, Fenty Beauty, and Savage X Fenty.
Rihanna owns 30% of that company.
Bloomberg said in March that Savage X Fenty was working with advisors on an IPO worth up to $3 billion. Rihanna owns a third of that business. She also owns half of the beauty company Fenty Beauty, which made $550 million in 2020. The French luxury fashion company LVMH owns the other half of the company.
Even though the numbers are impressive, Rihanna has said that she doesn’t care about awards and valuations. She reported to The New York Times’ T Magazine in 2019 that reaching financial milestones wouldn’t stop her from working because she never wanted to be rich.
Rihanna is a 9-time Grammy Award-winner.
The winner of nine Grammys also said she wants to give that money to important causes anyway. She said, “My money is not for me; I constantly think about how I may assist others.” “The world may convince you that the wrong things are significant, and it can cause you to forget what living is all about and what it is to be alive.” In 2012, Rihanna established a charity named the Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF). Its website intends to “finance and support innovative education and climate resilience programs.”
One of the foundation’s first acts a year after it started was selling the singer’s lipstick line with MAC Cosmetics to raise money for women and children affected by HIV/AIDS. This raised $60 million. And in January, CLF worked with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s #SmartSmall project to give $15 million to 18 different groups working for climate justice.
CLF’s website says that the money will go to groups in the U.S. and Caribbean that help and are led by women, youth, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ people.
Rihanna said in a January statement, “At the CLF, a lot of the work is based on the idea that climate disasters, which are happening more often and with more force, do not affect all settlements in the same way. Climate change hits communities of color and island nations the hardest.”
Next, Kim Kardashian is the youngest billionaire on Forbes.
Kim Kardashian, 41 years old and has a worth of $1.8 billion, is the next younger billionaire on Forbes. Kardashian and her sibling Kylie Jenner, who at 24 has a net worth of $600M and is the younger person on the list who is not a billionaire, have also done well in entertainment and retail, like with their makeup lines.
