Rihanna
Rihanna is the Barbadian pop icon turned beauty mogul who arguably made more money selling foundation than records, and she's still the most-searched woman on the internet.
Who Is Rihanna?
Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados. She was discovered at 15 by producer Evan Rogers and signed to Def Jam Recordings by Jay-Z at 16. What followed was one of the fastest rises in pop history, Umbrella, We Found Love, Diamonds, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 250 million records sold worldwide.
But Rihanna’s second act is arguably bigger than her first. In 2017, she launched Fenty Beauty, a cosmetics line under LVMH that redefined industry standards with its 40-shade foundation range. The brand reportedly crossed $1 billion in revenue within its first year. She later launched Savage X Fenty lingerie, cementing her status as a genuine business powerhouse.
She is also Barbados’s first and only billionaire, a status confirmed by Forbes based on her business holdings, primarily Fenty Beauty, and was officially named a National Hero of Barbados in 2021. She is one of the very few entertainers whose business empire has eclipsed their music catalog in cultural and financial weight.
Since 2021, her personal life has commanded as much search traffic as her business moves. Her relationship with rapper A$AP Rocky, the birth of their children, and her electrifying 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance, during which she revealed her second pregnancy, have kept her at the permanent center of global pop culture conversation.