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At just 10 years old, Selena made her acting debut on Barney and Friends, rising to fame five years later with her lead role in Disney’s Emmy award-winning series Wizards of Waverly Place, which earned her around $3 million in total, according to Cosmopolitan. She then transitioned to music as the leading lady of pop band Selena Gomez & the Scene before launching a successful solo career with her 2013 hit album Stars Dance, which ranked No. 1.
Today, Gomez boasts an impressive résumé: three studio albums, nine Top 10 pop hits, 44 singles (half of which are platinum or gold), and two Grammy nominations.
Interestingly enough, acting and singing don’t make up the majority of Gomez’s fortune.
According to Bloomberg, music tours accounted for less than 5% of Gomez’s wealth, with album and record sales less than 2%—unlike her close friend Taylor Swift, who reached billionaire status in October 2023 primarily from her music and concerts.
“Selena is not just a pop star,” Stacy Jones, founder and CEO of Hollywood Branded, a Los Angeles-based branding agency, told Bloomberg.
Roughly 84% of Gomez’s wealth—$1.1 billion—comes from a stake in her makeup brand Rare Beauty, which she founded just five years ago.
Launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, entering an already saturated market with celebrity-backed giants like Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and Kim Kardashian’s SKKN, Gomez marketed Rare Beauty products as “moderately priced makeup,” according to Bloomberg.
“I really tried my hardest to create products that were beyond just me putting my name on something,” she told 102.7 KIISFM in a 2023 radio interview.
Of course, having the third most-followed Instagram account on the planet helped.
With 424 million followers on the platform, just behind soccer stars Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Gomez aided her brand’s marketing efforts by posting clips of her applying makeup with Rare Beauty products. With 14 product categories and 150 items at launch, the brand quickly built a loyal following—especially for its viral liquid blush. In 2023, Rare Beauty hit $350 million in total sales, $70 million of which were generated from its blush alone, reports Bloomberg.
Her social media influence has also helped her secure multimillion-dollar deals with major brands like Puma and Coach, which earned her $30 million and $10 million, respectively.
But that’s not all. The “Come and Get It” singer, who’s been open about her struggles with bipolar disorder and depression, started her own mental health startup called Wondermind with her mother, which was valued at $100 million in 2022.
“She’s a multifaceted businesswoman with diverse income streams contributing to her impressive net worth,” Stacy Jones tells Bloomberg.
But despite all her business success, the Only Murders in the Building star (Hulu pays her $6 million per season) is most proud of her philanthropic mission to expand mental health services and education globally. She contributes 1% of her cosmetic sales to the Rare Impact Fund, which aims to raise $100 million by 2030.
At the TIME 100 Summit in April, Gomez said, “I think that we’ve been able to do something that, at least in cosmetics, no one has ever done. That is what makes me happy every night when I go to sleep.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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