S Poddar
It’s official: Selena Gomez, child star of shows including Barney and the Disney Channel, has reached a new milestone-billionaire status. The 32-year-old actress and singer, whose career has spanned almost three decades, has amassed $1.3 billion, according to Bloomberg. That achievement was celebrated on Friday as Gomez was added to Bloomberg’s billionaire index, placing her among the world’s wealthiest individuals.
Most of Gomez’s fortune is due to her beauty brand, Rare Beauty, which she founded just five years ago; today the company is already a big player in the cosmetics industry, with a stake in the brand now valued at over $1 billion. Rare Beauty-apparently raked in $400 million in net sales in the 12 months ending in February, having first launched with a range of viral products including liquid blush and lip tint. Success like this catapults Gomez into the ranks of the youngest self-made billionaire women in a league of icons like Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
Aside from her lucrative beauty company, Gomez made tens of millions with endorsement deals with very major brands: Louis Vuitton, Coach, and Puma. These added even more to her financial stability. She continues to contribute to her wealth through her work in the entertainment industry. For her starring role on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building-a show that has landed several Emmy nominations and just got renewed for its fifth season-Gomez was reportedly taking in at least $6 million a season.
While her acting and music careers have earned her a variety of critically acclaimed nods, including Emmy and Grammy nominations, the aforementioned have been but a small portion of her net worth. Gomez’s rise to billionaire status is truly a reflection of her business acumen, and also quite a successful tenure for Rare Beauty, which has connected with consumers at large and garnered remarkable growth in relatively short order.
A Texas-born child star, Gomez has grown up under the spotlight. Her fame often shared company with relentless scrutiny, a media obsession with everything from her on-fashion choices to her love life and health challenges. Gomez has tried to be open about her struggles, which include both her bipolar disorder diagnosis and her fight with the autoimmune disease lupus. She talks proudly of her family’s immigration background and shares different stories of how they migrated from Mexico to the United States.
Gomez’s influence reaches even deeper than the depth of her business endeavors and her entertainment career. Last year, she became the most followed woman on Instagram-1424 million followers-alongside passing both Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner. Despite having such a high number of followers, Gomez has been open about how social media has taken a dark turn for her mental health and she has taken breaks from the site.
But when news of her billionaire status hit the headlines, Gomez’s Instagram remained mute-a reflection perhaps of her sometimes ambivalent relationship with her public persona. Speaking to BBC1 almost a decade ago, as she looked back on her career, Gomez said how surreal it was that anybody would still be paying much attention to her, considering how young she still was. “It’s weird it’s almost two decades…am I too old?” she joked, adding that she has a lot more that she wants to accomplish. “You know what’s crazy, is that a lot of times I don’t even feel I’ve started,” she said.
The rise of Selena Gomez to a billionaire status is not only a story of financial success but one of resiliency, ambition, and connection with the audience. From the days she was a child star, to the days she became a business mogul, Gomez continuously renews herself and inspires others by showing that her story is yet to be over.
