Rihanna dethrones Kardashian as America’s youngest self-made billionaire

Rihanna is now the youngest self-made billionaire woman in the US — knocking Kim Kardashian to second place.

The 34-year-old singer recently made Forbes’ annual list of America’s richest self-made women for the third year in a row, ranking 21st overall, New York Post reports. She’s the only billionaire under 40 on the list.

The next-youngest billionaire on the Forbes list is Kardashian, 41, who has a net worth of $1.8 billion.

Kylie Jenner — who is the youngest non-billionaire on the list at age 24 — was crowned Forbes’ youngest self-made billionaire in 2018, only to have the title taken away after a recalculation of her net worth. Her net worth is currently $600 million.

Rihanna’s net worth is now $1.4 billion, which is only partly from her successful music career. While she is the top-selling digital artist of all time, her catalogue is not as lucrative as it might be since she has relatively few songwriting credits.  In 2016, the year she dropped her last studio album, “Anti,” she made an estimated $22.3 million from her music. The accompanying tour also generated more than $110 million in revenue.

Rather, most of her wealth comes from her entrepreneurial endeavours, including Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty.

In March, Bloomberg reported Savage X Fenty lingerie company was working with advisors on an initial public offering that could value the company at $3 billion or more. That’s up from the company’s $1 billion valuations in February 2021. Rihanna owns 30 per cent of that company. 

The nine-time Grammy Award winner also owns 50 per cent of Fenty Beauty, which launched in 2017 and brought in $550 million in revenue in 2020. French luxury fashion conglomerate LVMH owns the other half of the company. Fenty Beauty is reportedly worth $2.8 billion and, according to Forbes, Rihanna’s “stake in the fast-growing cosmetics company comprises the majority of her fortune.”