Rare Beauty

Selena Gomez. She founded Rare Beauty and launched it at Sephora in 2020, and she is the brand's owner and public face, deeply involved in product and messaging rather than just lending her name. It was built with backing from incubator Seed Beauty. The brand's success is the main reason Gomez is now reported to be a billionaire, Rare Beauty, not her music or acting, is the bulk of her fortune.

Yes on both. Rare Beauty is certified cruelty-free (it does not test on animals) and its products are vegan. This is one of its genuine selling points and a deliberate brand choice, unlike some big-conglomerate beauty lines that can't make the same claim because they sell in markets with animal-testing rules. If cruelty-free and vegan matter to you, Rare Beauty ticks both boxes.

One product did most of the heavy lifting: the Soft Pinch Liquid Blush. It went mega-viral on TikTok because it is extremely pigmented, a tiny dot blends into a natural flush, so a single bottle lasts forever and looks good on every skin tone. That word-of-mouth, plus Selena Gomez's enormous following and a brand built around mental health and self-acceptance, made it a phenomenon. The blush regularly sells out simply because demand outruns supply, especially when a new shade drops.

For most people, yes. The hero products, the Soft Pinch blush, the Positive Light highlighter, the soft-matte foundation, are widely praised for being lightweight, blendable and long-lasting, and the pigment payoff means you use very little. It sits in the mid-range price bracket: more than drugstore, less than luxury. Not every product is a knockout, but the bestsellers earn their hype, and the cost-per-use on something like the blush is low because a bottle lasts so long.

Not really, for what it is. It is priced like a typical 'masstige' brand, pricier than CeraVe-tier drugstore makeup but well below luxury houses like Dior or Chanel. Critics point out you can find cheaper liquid blushes, which is fair. But because the formulas are so pigmented, a single product lasts months, so the real cost-per-use is low. You are paying a mid-range price for genuinely good formulas and a brand with a strong identity, not a luxury markup.

Essentially, yes. Reports have valued Rare Beauty in the billions and credited it as the main driver of Selena Gomez's billionaire status, more than her acting, music or producing. As the sole owner of a fast-growing, high-margin beauty brand, the bulk of her net worth is tied to Rare Beauty's value rather than her entertainment career. Exact figures vary by source since the company is private, but the direction is clear: the makeup line is the money.

Rare Beauty is built around mental health and rejecting unrealistic beauty standards, Gomez has been open about her own struggles, and the brand leans into self-acceptance rather than 'fixing' your face. It runs the Rare Impact Fund, which the company pledged would raise money to expand access to mental-health services, funded partly by a share of sales. Whether you find that marketing or meaningful, the mental-health angle is central to how the brand presents itself, not an afterthought.

Rare Beauty sells through Sephora (its main retail partner) in stores and online, on its own website, and through Sephora's partners in various countries (including Sephora at Kohl's in the US and Space NK or Sephora in parts of Europe). Availability and the exact stockists vary by country, but Sephora is the safest bet almost everywhere it's sold. Buying from official channels also avoids the fakes that circulate for popular products like the blush.