Rihanna is just 33 years old, which is hard to believe. Despite this, she’s become the youngest solo artist to achieve 14 no. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and she’s sold more than 54 million albums and 210 million songs globally in the ten years since she began her musical career. Rihanna is the “best-selling digital artist of all time… with more than 100 million [RIAA] gold & platinum song certifications” and an eight-time Grammy winner who has also won 14 Billboard Music Prizes, among many other awards.Rihanna is a bona fide businesswoman with many entrepreneurial enterprises in addition to her musical accomplishments. However, despite her youth, her obvious cultural influence has permanently stamped her in history as a global icon. Despite her numerous accomplishments, Rihanna is only getting started. She’s busy adding to her already impressive list of accomplishments: executive producer, fashion designer, actor, smart business entrepreneur, and philanthropist, to name a few.
Abloh was born in the suburbs of Chicago in 1980 to Ghanaian parents. In 2002, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and went on to study architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He first gained notoriety as Kanye West’s creative director, and the two interned at Fendi together in 2009.
Pyrex Vision, Abloh’s first fashion line, debuted in 2012, and he partnered with Matthew Williams and Heron Preston as part of the Been Trill collective before teaming up with the New Guards Group to establish luxury streetwear sensation Off-White in 2013. In 2017, he debuted a groundbreaking collaboration with Nike, in which he dismantled ten of the brand’s iconic sneakers.
On the albums Talk That Talk (2011), which had the effervescent international hit “We Found Love,” and Unapologetic (2012), which featured the starry-eyed “Diamonds,” Rihanna maintained a steely and seductive attitude. The latter album also included a controversial duet with Brown, with whom she briefly resumed her relationship. Anti, her eighth studio album, came out in 2016. Rihanna has acted in the films Battleship (2012) and This Is the End, in addition to her singing career (2013). She also provided the voice of one of the main characters in the animated film Home (2015). Rihanna then starred as a hacker in Ocean’s 8 (2018), a female-led reimagining of the early 2000s’ Ocean’s Eleven trilogy.
Rihanna established her own cosmetics line, Fenty Beauty, in 2017 after collaborating on various cosmetics collections in the early 2010s. Fans flocked to the brand, which was hailed for its diversity, with 40 different foundation tones to choose from. Rihanna stated in 2019 that she would collaborate with LVMH Mot Hennessy—Louis Vuitton to launch the Fenty fashion line. As a result, she became the first woman of color to lead a fashion house within LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate. Later that year, Fenty’s debut collection was unveiled.
Rihanna was abused by her boyfriend, fellow R&B singer Chris Brown, in an incident that was extensively reported in tabloid news and gossip blogs in early 2009. He was convicted of assault after they split up. Later that year, she released Rated R, an album marked by icily austere sound and somber lyrics about revenge, much of which she co-wrote. Despite a little drop in sales, she had another big hit with “Rude Boy.” On the dance-friendly Loud, Rihanna reverted to less solemn fare (2010). The album’s sexually suggestive single “S&M” scored her 10th number one Billboard hit in early 2011, making her the youngest artist in history to do so at the age of 23.
Rihanna is a multi-talented performer, entrepreneur, fashion designer, actress, and philanthropist. She has appeared on the covers of numerous fashion magazines, including American and British Vogue, i-D, and W Magazine, and is frequently acknowledged as a fashion inspiration and trend setter in both the high street and luxury sectors. In 2019, she co-created the ready-to-wear line Fenty with LVMH, making her the first woman of color to lead an LVMH maison since Christian Lacroix was founded in 1987.
She has caught the attention of Alexander Wang, Tom Ford, and Peter Dundas within the business. “She is a really talented dresser in the same way that Kate Moss is,” Dundas told British Vogue. She’s an exaggerated representation of what a lot of females aspire to look like, but she’s constantly one step ahead.”
The singer introduced her own label, $CHOOL Kills, in June 2015, which will sell accessories, purses, and clothes. This follows her highly successful collaborations with River Island, MAC cosmetics, and Puma apparel.
Rihanna has inked a deal with LVMH to launch a beauty brand called Fenty Beauty. It produced €500 million in its first full year of operation and succeeded to rewrite at least part of the cosmetics industry’s standards by mandating at least 40 colours of foundation. She’s also reshaped the lingerie discourse with the debut of Savage x Fenty, a plus-size collection.
Rihanna has been dressed by Givenchy to Alaa on both the fashion week circuit and red carpet. She has also aided in the start of the careers of new designers like as KTZ and Adam Selman, working closely with her stylist Mel Ottenberg. Selman designed the ‘Naked’ CFDA gown, which garnered press attention.
She is regularly lauded for her ability to combine high-end and high-street fashion, resulting in distinctive ensembles that inspire not only the general public, but also big fashion designers.
Rihanna released her Fenty Puma by Rihanna line in September 2016 following her first runway collection for the brand during the Autumn/Winter 2016 season of New York Fashion Week. The collaboration came to an end in 2018.
