Beauty Brands Make Bad Girl Ri Ri a Billionaire

It’s official. Music is a side hustle for Rihanna.

RiRi may have sold 60 million albums and 215 million digital tracks worldwide, according to her label Roc Nation, to make her the top-selling digital artist of all time — but when it comes to total earnings those from her 18-year music career aren’t even an umbrella-worthy drop in the bucket compared to those from her fashion and beauty lines which bare her last name. 

Fenty Beauty (makeup) and Savage x Fenty (lingerie) are largely responsible for making the Barbadian, better known as Bad Girl in some parts, a billionaire. According to Forbes the 33-year-old’s net worth is an estimated $1.7 billion dollars. It’s a breathtaking sum that makes the eight-time Grammy Award winner the wealthiest female musician and puts her only behind Oprah ($2.7) when it comes to female high-earners in entertainment.

Her 50% stake in Fenty Beauty accounts for the bulk of her fortune. Savage x Fenty, which she owns 30% of received a $1 billion valuation in February, is worth about $270 million, and the rest of her earnings come from her heralded music career and stints as an actress. 

What’s the secret to her business success? According to Shannon Coyne, cofounder of Bluestock Advisors, a consumer products consultancy, it is catering to the needs of women who up-till-now were ignored by the larger fashion and beauty industries. 

She was one of the first brands that came out and said, ‘I want to speak to all of those different people,’” Coyne told Forbes. “A lot of women felt there were no lines out there that catered to their skin tone. It was light, medium, medium dark, dark. We all know that’s not reality.

Reaching billionaire status is something worth celebrating, but many fans are surely hoping that she will take a break from her many business ventures in the near-future and make a return to recording. 

Her eighth album “Anti” was released in 2016. It spent 63 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 1, sold 11 million copies, and was named No. 7 on the list of 100 Best Albums of the 2010s by Billboard's staff which described it as Rihanna at her most confident.

Biles Earns Bronze to Boost GOAT Case

The Olympics may have started out in tragedy for Simone Biles, but they ended in a historic triumph for the greatest of all time. 

A week after an emotional Biles withdrew from the team gymnastics final for her mental health, the 24-year-old returned to action on the balance beam Tuesday in Tokyo. Performing a simplified version of the routine she had unveiled during the qualifying round, Biles earned a 14.000,  good enough for a third-place finish behind China's Chenchen Guan (14.633) and Xijing Tang (14.233).

The bronze medal, her second of these Olympics along with the team silver, tied Biles with Shannon Miller at seven earned making them the most decorated gymnasts to ever compete for Team USA. The former's four golds (compared to just two for Miller), five all-around, five floor exercise, and seven US national all-around championships leave little doubt that she has lived up to her legacy as her sports greatest.

Following the feat the superstar told ESPN that it wasn't easy pulling out of all those competitions.

"People just thought it was easy, but I physically and mentally was not in the right head space and I didn't want to jeopardize my health and my safety because, at the end of the day, it's not worth it. My mental and physical health is above all medals that I could ever win," Biles said. "To do beam, which I didn't think I was going to be, just meant the world to be back out there. And I wasn't expecting to walk away with the medal. I was just going out there doing this for me."

Country Icon Dolly Parton Invested 'I Will Always Love You' Royalties in Black Neighborhood

Make no mistake. “I Will Always Love You” was written by Dolly Parton, but it is, always and forever will be Whitney Houston’s song.

Courtesy RCA Records 

The country music legend admitted as much in a 2020 interview with Oprah Winfrey,

“I was shot so full of adrenaline and energy, I had to pull off, because I was afraid that I would wreck, so I pulled over quick as I could to listen to that whole song,” Parton recounted to Winfrey hearing Houston’s version on the radio for the first time. “I could not believe how she did that. I mean, how beautiful it was that my little song had turned into that, so that was a major, major thing.”

So, it’s only fitting that the queen of country music, honored one of the leading ladies of soul by investing profits from the massive hit – Houston’s cover for the 1992 film The Bodyguard, which she also starred in alongside Kevin Costner, earned Parton $10 million in royalties in the 1990s alone according to Forbes — into the black community. 

During an appearance Thursday on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen the 75-year-old icon revealed she had invested the money from her songwriting credit in a building in a historically Black Nashville neighborhood when asked, "What is the best thing that you bought or invested in with money from your 'I Will Always Love You' royalties?"

“I bought my big office complex down in Nashville, and so, I thought, well, this is a wonderful place to be. I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. And it was just off the beaten path from 16th Avenue. And I thought, well, I am gonna buy this place," she replied, adding. "It was a whole strip mall. And I thought, this is the perfect place for me to be, considering it was Whitney. And so, I just thought this was great. I'm just gonna be down here with her people, who are my people as well. And so, I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex, and I think, this is the house that Whitney built!"

The revelation should come as no surprise for fans of the 10-time Grammy winner, who has come out in support of Black Lives Matter in recent years and has a reputation for charity and being unproblematic that dates back decades.

Still, it’s a nice gesture and fitting tribute for Houston who died tragically in 2012 at the age of 48, accidentally drowning in her hotel bathtub.

Parton, who wrote the song in 1972 on the same day she wrote "Jolene," another one of her major hits, saw her version reach No. 1 on the Billboard’s country charts twice (1974, 1982) also said she would have loved to perform the hit with Houston during the interview but she had no illusions as to whose voice would stand out on that duet.

“I would've loved that, but I don't think I could come up to snuff with her though. She would've outsung me on that one for sure," she said.