America’s youngest female billionaire didn’t grow up in a high-rise in Manhattan or the Hollywood Hills. Instead, Rihanna amassed her fortune from her own music and entrepreneurial ventures.
Recently, the 34-year-old singer and CEO of Fenty Beauty graced Forbes’ annual list of America’s richest women for the third year in a row. She ranked 21st overall and is the only billionaire under 40 on the list. Part of Rihanna’s $1.4 billion net worth is from her successful music career. Most of these are from her three retail companies: Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin and Savage X Fenty.
Bloomberg reported in March that Savage X Fenty underwear was working with advisers on an IPO that could potentially be valued at $3 billion. Rihanna owns 30% of this company. She also owns half of Fenty Beauty, which generated revenue of $550 million in 2020. The other half of the company is owned by French luxury fashion conglomerate LVMH.
The numbers are impressive, but Rihanna said her focus isn’t on the ratings and accolades. In 2019, she told The New York Times’ T Magazine that because she never planned to make a fortune, reaching financial milestones “isn’t going to stop me from working.”
The nine-time Grammy Award winner also said she wants to give that money to important causes. “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 a priority and it makes you really miss the essence of life, what it means to be alive.”
In 2012, Rihanna founded a charitable foundation, the Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF). It aims to “support and fund innovative initiatives for education and climate resilience,” according to its website.
One of his first initiatives, launched a year after the foundation was founded, raised $60 million for women and children affected by HIV/AIDS through sales of the singer’s lipstick line with MAC Cosmetics. And in January, CLF teamed up with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s #SmartSmall initiative to donate a total of $15 million to 18 different climate justice groups.
That money goes to organizations “focused on and led by women, youth, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ communities” in the U.S. and the Caribbean, according to CLF’s website.
“At [CLF]much of the work is rooted in the understanding that climate disasters, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, do not affect all communities equally, with communities of color and island nations facing the brunt of climate change,” Rihanna said in a January statement.
The next youngest billionaire on the Forbes list is 41-year-old Kim Kardashian, whose net worth is $1.8 billion. Kardashian and her sister Kylie Jenner — who, at 24, is the youngest non-billionaire on the list, with a net worth of $600 million — have also found success in both entertainment and retail, including their respective makeup lines.
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