Though many celebrities are very, very rich, only a handful have actually achieved billionaire status.
The 10-figure club is mostly populated by entrepreneurs and business magnates — people including Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Celebrities who breathe that rarefied air have usually diversified their portfolios to include all kinds of partnerships, investments and projects unrelated to their acting or music skills.
Rihanna, for example, became a billionaire in August 2021, but as fans know all too well, she hasn’t released an album since January 2016. The earnings that put her over the top didn’t come from her music, but rather her Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin lines and her lucrative Savage x Fenty lingerie company.
Kanye West, another musician turned billionaire, is in the same boat as Rihanna — his music makes him far less money than his numerous other ventures. In April 2020, after months of back-and-forth, Forbes magazine finally declared that the rapper was worth about $1.3 billion, between his Yeezy holdings, real estate and other investments.
His ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, is also a member of the billionaires’ club thanks to her Skims shapewear and KKW Beauty line, the latter of which was undergoing a refresh as of July 2021.
Her little sister Kylie Jenner, however, is not in the club, despite a 2019 Forbes report that dubbed her the world’s youngest “self-made” billionaire. After further review of her ᴀssets, the magazine revoked the тιтle in May 2020, claiming that the Kylie Cosmetics founder’s team had provided inaccurate documents.
The Life of Kylie alum wasn’t bothered by the change, though. “I thought this was a reputable site,” she tweeted at the time. “All I see are a number of inaccurate statements and unproven ᴀssumptions lol. I’ve never asked for any тιтle or tried to lie my way there EVER. Period.”
Keep scrolling to see which celebrities are members of the 10-figure club:
Rihanna
Forbes declared the “Needed Me” songstress a billionaire in August 2021, making her the richest female musician in the world. The magazine estimated her worth at $1.7 billion, with $1.4 billion of that coming from the value of Fenty Beauty and her stake in Savage x Fenty.
Credit: Jason Merritt/Radarpics/Shutterstock
Kim Kardashian
The KUWTK alum became a billionaire in April 2021. According to Forbes, her stake in KKW Beauty is worth about $500 million while her Skims stake is likely around $225 million. Her other wealth comes from real estate, cash and investments. The Kardashian-Jenner family also signed a deal with Hulu in 2020 to produce new content for the streaming company.
Taylor Swift
Bloomberg named Swift a billionaire in October 2023, reporting her net worth as $1.1 billion and crowning her as “one of the few entertainers to reach that status based on music and performing alone, the result of work and talent, but also canny marketing and timing.”
According to a Bloomberg News Analysis at the time, Swift’s music catalog is worth an estimated $400 million. In addition, she’s earned a total of $370 million in concert ticket sales and merchandise, $120 million in Spotify and YouTube stream earnings and $80 million in royalties from music sales. Her real estate properties, meanwhile, are worth an estimated $110 million.
