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Robyn Rihanna Fenty made it impossible to forget her name as the icon transformed into a brand that went beyond lyrics to help make her the wealthiest female musician in the world.
Rihanna, 31, has amassed a $600 million fortune after launching wildly popular businesses in makeup and lingerie, according to Forbes. The singer's Fenty Beauty makeup line launched in 2017 at Sephora and reportedly made $100 million in sales in its first few weeks, in part due to its focus on diversity.
She is also behind the Fenty Savage lingerie line and is expected to be the first woman to create an original brand at LVMH, the French luxury fashion house. The Barbadian singer would be the first woman of color to head up a line with the company, which owns the famous Louis Vuitton brand.
Rihanna told the New York Times in an interview published last month that the motivation for expanding into different creative outlets was happiness, and that money didn't drive her work.
"Money is happening along the way, but I’m working out of what I love to do, what I’m passionate about," Rihanna told the New York Times. "Work will change when my life changes in the future but an amount of money is not going to stop that."
And Rihanna isn't the first artist making history by going beyond the studio.
Jay-Z was recently named the first hip-hop artist to amass a billion-dollar fortune, according to Forbes.
Jay-Z's sprawling business empire includes stakes in liquor, art, real estate and big-name companies like Uber. The 22-time Grammy winner also launched his own brands, including the clothing label Rocawear, which was sold to Iconix for more than $200 million in 2007.
The artist spoke about money in his thirteenth studio album, 4:44, where he rapped about real estate investments and generational wealth. In his song "Legacy," Jay-Z said that his mother's decision to put her money into bonds for him was "the sweetest thing of all time."