Selena Gomez: Self-made billionaire without money for gas

“I can remember about seven times when our car got stuck on the highway because we ran out of money for gas,” Gomez said. Elle in 2012, Retelling her childhood in poverty together with her then teenage mother Mandy Teefey.

“My mother gave up everything for me and had three jobs,” Gomez said in a 2017 interview with Entertainment.

Teefey, then 16, brought Gomez in 1992 in a “really rough neighborhood“” from Grand Prairie, Texas. Five years later, she divorced her then-husband and raised Selena as a single mother while attempting to make it as a stage actress.

As fate would have it, Gomez discovered her passion for acting after spending a while at her mother’s theater, which later made her a star.

Teefey detailed her daughter’s early fascination with acting New York Times 2017: “She went with me to one of my rehearsals and sat there motionless the whole time. On the way home she was quiet and then said, ‘You know, Mom, it might be more fun if you did it like this.’ And I thought, ‘Oh no. She’s going to be an actress.'”

And that is exactly what she did.

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At just 10 years old, Selena made her acting debut in Barney and friends, Five years later, she rose to fame together with her leading role in Disney’s Emmy-winning series Wizards of Waverly Placewhich earned her a complete of around 3 million dollars, accordingly Cosmopolitan. She then switched to music because the lead singer of a pop band Selena Gomez and the scene before she began a successful solo profession together with her hit album Stars dancewhich Rank No. 1.

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Today, Gomez has a formidable resume: three studio albums, nine top 10 pop hits, 44 singles (half of them platinum or gold) and two Grammy nominations.

Interestingly, acting and singing don’t make up nearly all of Gomez’s wealth.

Accordingly BloombergMusic tours accounted for lower than 5% of Gomez’s wealth, and album and record sales accounted for lower than 2% – unlike her close friend Taylor Swift, who achieved billionaire status in October 2023 primarily through her music and live shows.

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“Selena is not just a pop star,” says Stacy Jones, founder and CEO of Hollywood Branded, a Los Angeles-based branding agency. told Bloomberg.

About 84 percent of Gomez’s wealth – $1.1 billion – comes from a stake in her makeup brand Rare Beauty, which she founded just five years ago.

Gomez launched in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic into an already saturated market with celebrity-backed giants like Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and Kim Kardashian’s SKKN, marketing Rare Beauty products as “mid-priced makeup.” accordingly Bloomberg.

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“I really tried my best to create products that weren’t just about putting my name on them,” she said 102.7 KIISFM in a radio from 2023 Interview.

Of course, it helped that I even have the third most followed Instagram account on the planet.

With 424 million followers on the platform, just behind soccer stars Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Gomez supported her brand’s marketing efforts by posting clips of herself applying makeup using Rare Beauty products. With 14 product categories and 150 items at launch, the brand quickly built a loyal following – particularly for its viral liquid blush. In 2023, Rare Beauty 350 million US dollars in total sales, 70 million US dollars of which were caused solely by the redness, reports Bloomberg.

Her social media influence has also helped her land multimillion-dollar deals with major brands like Puma and Coach, earning her 30 million US dollars And 10 million US dollarsrespectively.

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But that isn’t all. The Come and get it The singer, who’s open about her battle with bipolar disorder and depression, founded her own mental health startup called Wondermind together with her mother, which was valued at $100 million in 2022.

“She is a versatile businesswoman with diverse income streams that contribute to her impressive net worth,” Stacy Jones told Bloomberg.

But despite their business success Only murders within the constructing Star (Hulu pays her 6 million US dollars per season) is particularly pleased with her philanthropic mission to expand mental health care and education worldwide. She donates 1% of her cosmetics sales to the Rare Impact Fund, which goals to boost $100 million by 2030.

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On TIME 100 Summit in April, Gomez said“I believe that we have achieved something that no one has ever achieved before, at least in cosmetics. That is what makes me happy every night when I go to sleep.”