BEAUTY & THE BUCKS

Rihanna is rolling in cash thanks to the success of her Fenty cosmetics line

- ROBYN LUCAS

SUFFICE to say her work, work, work, work, work has paid off – and then some.

She’s one of the biggest music stars and the first black woman to head a luxury fashion brand – and now she’s officially a billionaire too.

Forbes magazine, tab-keeper on the rich, the famous, and the staggeringly successful, recently reported that Robyn Rihanna Fenty had climbed into the heady world of dollar billionaires.

She’s worth an eye-watering $1,7 billion (R25,5bn), making her the wealthiest female musician in the world and the second-richest female entertainer on the planet, right behind Oprah Winfrey.

And she’s only 33 years old.

Rihanna is best known as a hit-making musician but it’s her cosmetics line, Fenty Beauty, that’s raking in the megabucks.

Her beauty range has been groundbreaking for its inclusive philosophy that women everywhere should be catered for. Her makeup comes in traditionally hard-to-match skin tones, formulas that work for all skin types, and universal shades.

“In every product, I was like, ‘There needs to be something for a dark-skinned girl, there needs to be something for a really pale girl, there needs to be something in-between’,” she explained.

Her half of Fenty Beauty, which she co-owns with luxury brand LVMH, is worth $1,4bn (R21bn). The rest of her fortune is in her 30% stake in her lingerie company, Savage X Fenty – worth an estimated $270 million (R4,05bn) – and her earnings as a chart-topping musician.