Rihanna was born in 1988 in the parish of Saint Michael in Barbados, to a Guyanese mother and Barbadian father. She once sold clothes from a Bridgetown street stall, and is now worth $1.7 billion (as estimated by Forbes Magazine). This makes her the wealthiest female musician in the world, and second only to Oprah Winfrey as the richest female entertainer. Aspiring pop stars should note, however, that this isn’t all due directly to her music; the bulk (an estimated $1.4 billion) of Rihanna’s fortune comes from the value of Fenty Beauty, a 50-50 joint venture with French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH run by Bernard Arnault, the world’s second-richest person.
“A lot of women felt there were no lines out there that catered to their skin tone. It was light, medium, medium-dark, dark,” says Shannon Coyne, co-founder of consumer products consultancy Bluestock Advisors. “We all know that’s not reality. Fenty was one of the first brands that came out and said, ‘I want to speak to all of those different people.’”
Hopefully, Robyn Rihanna Fenty’s success will serve as an inspiration to many Caribbean women to follow.
