Fenty Beauty is a cosmetics brand launched by Rihanna in 2017. As Harvey Nichols’ website suggests: “the brand is ‘radiance reimagined’ and she intends to achieve it with the release of forty boundary-breaking shades of foundation, a selection of glowing highlighters, luminous primers, shimmering makeup sticks and the sexiest blotting powder and paper yet”.
Before launching Fenty Beauty, Rihanna previously collaborated with MAC Cosmetics, as well as Parlux Ltd. The Fenty Beauty line was created in collaboration with Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey (LVMH).
Rihanna, who comes from Barbados, is said to have created Fenty Beauty to extend the foundation shade offering available on the market and to enable more women of colour to use make-up which matches their skin tone.
Fenty Beauty is a success story. Forbes reported that after 15 months of operation Fenty Beauty acquired US$570 million in revenue. There is scope to believe that Fenty will most likely be worth a billion dollars before one of its biggest rivals, Kylie Cosmetics. According to social media engagement tracking reports, Fenty is ahead of Kylie Cosmetics in many areas, with a huge number of consumers specifically choosing Fenty products over any other brands.
Fenty made the Time magazine’s list of the 25 best inventions of 2017, alongside Apple’s iPhone X and Tesla Model 3.
It also won the WWD Beauty Inc. award in 2017 for the launch of the year in the prestige sector.