Topline
Billionaire popstar Rihanna has once again teased the release of new music in an Instagram video shared Thursday night, following a decade-long album hiatus, but her wealth was built through her multiple billion-dollar business ventures, which span makeup to lingerie.
Rihanna (Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images)
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Key Facts
In the Instagram video, captioned “commercial break,” Rihanna is seen entering a recording studio at 2:18 am, where she works on a console and jots down notes amid laughs with colleagues.
In June 2024, Rihanna said she was “prepared to go back in the studio” to work on her ninth album, referred to as R9 by fans, at a launch party for her haircare brand Fenty Hair.
In February 2025, Rihanna confirmed she was making progress on the album in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, saying she’d “finally cracked” her new sound.
This January, she was spotted entering a recording studio in New York City late at night.
Forbes Valuation
Forbes named the 38-year-old Barbados native a billionaire in 2021, four years after the launch of her makeup brand Fenty Beauty as a 50/50 joint venture with luxury beauty conglomerate LVMH. By 2018, its first full calendar year, the line was bringing in more than $550 million in annual revenue, according to LVMH, a striking success even after accounting for Rihanna’s celebrity status (beauty brands by the Kardashians and Jessica Alba were raking in less). That same year, Rihanna hit the market with direct-to-consumer lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty, which quickly began selling out collections and introduced a subscription model to underwear at a monthly fee of about $50, hitting $150 million in revenue in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2021, the company raised $115 million at a $1 billion valuation, becoming the second unicorn in the star’s portfolio. She’s since expanded her empire to include skincare (Fenty Skin), and, most recently, haircare in 2022 with Fenty Hair. This January, Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin, which were initially distributed exclusively online and through Sephora stores, owned by LVMH, expanded into 19 Space NK stores across the U.K. That same month, retailer Myer announced that Fenty Beauty would roll out across its Australian stores and online in May 2026.
Tangent
Rihanna recruited Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, 21-year-old Vivian Jenna Wilson, who has been on the rise in the fashion industry with a recent Teen Vogue cover, to model for Savage X Fenty’s 2026 Valentine’s Day campaign.
Key Background
Rihanna hasn’t released an album since 2016’s “Anti,” which debuted at #27 on the Billboard 200 before eventually reaching #1 and becoming a cultural phenomenon, with hits like “Love on the Brain” and “Work.” The Anti World Tour went on to gross over $110 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. In the years since, she’s made music for several movies, including the song “Friend of Mine” for the 2025 Smurfs animated feature that she starred in as Smurfette, and “Lift Me Up” for the 2022 sequel to Marvel’s superhero blockbuster Black Panther, “Wakanda Forever.”
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinadilicosa/2026/02/27/rihanna-prompts-new-music-rumors-but-her-fortune-is-outside-the-studio/
