Rihanna has made millions from her music, but that's chump change compared to what she earns with her beauty line, Fenty (her real name is Robyn Fenty). In 2021, Forbes estimated her net worth at $1.7 billion, far more than any other female musician. About $1.4 billion of that is from Fenty Beauty, which sells makeup and skin care products.
Guys Rihanna has been linked with include Shia LaBeouf, Josh Hartnettt, Drake and Matt Kemp - he's a baseball player for the Dodgers that she went out with near the end of 2010. She started dating A$AP Rocky in 2020 after years of friendship, and in May 2022, they welcomed a baby boy.
She's from Bridgetown, Barbados, and was discovered when she was 16 by an American record producer named Evan Rogers, who saw her when he was on vacation there. Rogers, who was lead singer of the group Rythm Syndicate ("
P.A.S.S.I.O.N."), was married to a Bajan woman and a regular visitor to the island. He brought Rihanna to the United States and helped her put a demo together, which got the attention of Def Jam Records and their president at the time, Jay-Z, who signed her to a deal the night she auditioned.
She doesn't demonstrate much diva behavior, but she does claim to own at least 1,500 pairs of shoes.
Rihanna believes she has a very large forehead. She calls it her "fivehead."
She was dating
Chris Brown when he assaulted her the night before the Grammy Awards in 2009. Both had to miss the ceremony, and Brown was ordered to stay 100 feet away from Rihanna at all times. In February, 2011, a judge eased the restraining order, which Rihanna didn't contest. She explained that the assault was a personal thing, and she didn't want to hurt his career by preventing him from appearing at awards shows.
When Rihanna was the cover girl for
Rolling Stone in April, 2011, she played up the image from her hit "
S&M," saying, "I like to be spanked. Being tied up is fun. I like to be spontaneous. Sometimes whips and chains can be overly planned - you gotta stop, get the whip from the drawer downstairs... I'd rather have him use his hands."
Rihanna was Esquire magazine's "Sexiest Woman Alive" in 2011.
Rihanna was famous in America before she was well-known in her home country. She was never into the traditional music of Barbados, and her stardom on the island came with her global success.
Rihanna passed Justin Bieber on June 18, 2013 as the most-viewed artist on YouTube. At that date the 77 videos on Rihanna's official VEVO channel had clocked a combined 3.784 billion views in total, surpassing the total view counts of the 79 videos on Bieber's official VEVO channel by roughly two million views.
It turns out many of us have been saying her name the wrong way. If you've been pronouncing the Bajan star's name "Ree-ahh-na," with an emphasis on the middle syllable - you're wrong. The singer put us all right with a post on Instagram, saying her own name should be pronounced: "Ree-anna."
Home character Gratuity "Tip" Tucci, voiced by Rihanna in 2015, was the first human black protagonist in a feature film by DreamWorks Animation.
Asked during an interview on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show what her go-to karaoke song is, Rihanna revealed it is Bon Jovi's "
Livin' on a Prayer."
Rihanna's fanbase are known as her Navy, after the lyric "We're an army, better yet a navy" from her
Rated R track "
G4L."
Her mother, Monica Braithwaite, owns a clothing boutique back home in Barbados.
Rihanna took some time off from music after releasing her album
Anti in 2016 and touring to support it. She returned in 2022 with the song "
Lift Me Up" from the movie
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in 2023.
Rihanna's performance at the 2023 Super Bowl LVII halftime show set a new mark for the most-watched halftime show, with 121.017 viewers, surpassing the 118.5 million who watched Katy Perry's performance in 2015. Usher bested her with 123.4 million for his halftime show in 2024.
After starting a relationship with American rapper A$AP Rocky in 2020, Rihanna gave birth to their son RZA Athelston Mayers on May 13, 2022. The name RZA is a tribute to the iconic rapper and producer RZA, leader of the Wu-Tang Clan. The middle name comes from his father, whose birth name is Rakim Athelston Mayers.
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky got together professionally in 2012 when he appeared on a remix of her song "
Cockiness (Love It)." The next year, she played his love interest in his video for "
Fashion Killa." They didn't become a couple until years later, but Rocky did some foreshadowing in that song with the line, "She save it so our babies will be flyer than their parents."
