Rihanna is hailed as the richest female musician on the planet.
Forbes magazine declared that the music star and entrepreneur is officially a billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $1.7 Billion – mostly thanks to her Fenty Beauty line, which brings in a cool $1.4 Billion for her.
Aside from her highly successful music career, Rih has amassed an impressive portfolio of successful business ventures, which includes her above-mentioned beauty line, skincare line Fenty Skin, and inclusive lingerie line Savage X Fenty. (Her Fenty luxury line with LVMH released its final collection in November 2020.)
“The majority of her $1.7 billion estimated net worth is not from singing but from cosmetics,” Forbes editor Kerry Dolan tells GMA. “From a super-successful cosmetics line which, when it was launched, drew lots of praise because there were something, like, more than 40 shades for all range of skin tones, which was something that at the time, not very many cosmetics lines had been that inclusive.”
There’s only one other self-made celebrity richer than Riri: Oprah Winfrey.
Fans would argue there is one downside to her successful business empire – she hasn’t released new music since 2016’s Anti. Just about everyone has been eagerly anticipating Rihanna’s long-awaited ninth album, which has been in the works for a while.
While there’s still no official word when R9 is going to drop, in 2019, she shared some juicy details about her new era to Vogue.
“I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album,” she told the magazine. “It’s not gonna be typical of what you know as reggae. But you’re going to feel the elements in all of the tracks.”
“Reggae always feels right to me,” she continues. “It’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter how far or long removed I am from that culture, or my environment that I grew up in; it never leaves. It’s always the same high. Even though I’ve explored other genres of music, it was time to go back to something that I haven’t really homed in on completely for a body of work.”
Plus, she also teased that she’s already in the “discovery stage” of her 10th album!
“We always went into the music this time around saying that we were going to do two different pieces of art,” said Rihanna. “One was gonna be inspired by the music that I grew up listening to. And one was gonna be the evolution of where I’m going next with music.”
Last year, Riri shared that she’s been hitting the studio to work on her new music and revealed that one of her collaborators on the upcoming album is Pharrell Williams.
As for what fans can expect, “I don’t want all my albums to feel like themes. There are no rules, there’s no format, there’s nothing. There’s just good music and if I feel it, I’m putting it out,” she told British Vogue in May 2020.
“I feel like I have no boundaries. I’ve done everything,” she continues. “I’ve done all the hits, I’ve tried every genre. Now I’m just, I’m wide open. I can make anything that I want.”
“Rih is in a different place right now,” Pharrell said during his interview for Allure’s December/January issue. “Like, wow. She’s from a different world.”
“I‘m willing to bet, because Venus is gaseous, that if they had a telescope that could zoom through all that s–t, you’d see Rih laying there naked,” he added.
