Rihanna emerges as America’s youngest self-made billionaire woman worth $1.4 billion

Rihanna is now the youngest self-made billionaire woman in the US after accumulating a net worth of $1.4bn by age 34, knocking Kim Kardashian to second place.

The 34-year-old pop singer made Forbes’ annual list of America’s richest self-made women for the third year in a row, ranking 21st overall. 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.

According to Forbes, the Barbados native is a billionaire due to the success of her cosmetics line, which she co-owns with French luxury retailer LVMH, and which “generated more than $550m in revenue in 2020”.

While Fenty Beauty “comprises the majority of her fortune,” it is far from Rihanna’s only source of income, as the outlet notes that the nine-time Grammy winner also earns a significant amount from her music career and her lingerie brand, Savage x Fenty, which “raised money at a $1bn valuation in February 2021”. Rihanna currently has a 30 per cent stake in the company.

As for her status as a self-made billionaire, Forbes has given Rihanna a “self-made score” of 10, a ranking the outlet explains ranges from one to 10  and indicates how much of one’s fortune they have inherited or built on their own.

According to Forbes, a ranking of one through five indicates “someone who inherited some or all of his or her fortune,” while scores six through 10 “are for those who built their company or established a fortune on his or her own”.

The entrepreneur, who is the only billionaire under 40 on this year’s list, is likely to continue building her empire, as she previously told The New York Times that a “number is not going to stop” her from continuing to work.

“I never thought I’d make this much money, so a number is not going to stop me from working,” Rihanna told the outlet in 2019.

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. Rihanna owns 30 percent of that company.

The nine-time Grammy Award winner also owns 50 percent 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.