Celebrity Beauty Brands
Which ones worked, which ones didn't, and what separates a billion-dollar brand from a vanity project.
The celebrity beauty brand market exploded after Fenty Beauty proved it could generate $570 million in year one. Between 2017 and 2024, over 100 celebrities launched beauty lines. Most of them failed or stalled. A handful became billion-dollar brands.
The difference isn’t fame. It’s structure, involvement, and whether the brand has a reason to exist beyond the celebrity’s name.
The Landscape
| Brand | Celebrity | Launch | Ownership structure | Estimated revenue (2024) | Valuation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fenty Beauty | Rihanna | 2017 | 50/50 with LVMH/Kendo | $602M | $2-3B |
| Kylie Cosmetics | Kylie Jenner | 2015 | 49% Jenner / 51% Coty | ~$200M (down from peak) | ~$1.2B (at Coty sale) |
| Rare Beauty | Selena Gomez | 2020 | Majority owned by Gomez | ~$400M+ | $2B+ |
| Haus Labs | Lady Gaga | 2019 (relaunched 2022) | Co-founded with CEO Ben Jones, VC-backed | ~$75–100M (est.) | Not disclosed |
| Rhode | Hailey Bieber | 2022 | Founder-owned | ~$200M+ | Not disclosed |
| Honest Beauty | Jessica Alba | 2012 | Co-founded, went public (IPO 2021) | ~$300M (Honest Company total) | ~$200M (market cap, declined) |
| KKW Beauty | Kim Kardashian | 2017-2021 | Sold 20% to Coty for $200M | Shut down, relaunched as SKKN | N/A |
| Florence by Mills | Millie Bobby Brown | 2019 | Founder-owned | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| r.e.m. beauty | Ariana Grande | 2021 | Partnership | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| About Face | Halsey | 2021 | Founder-owned | Not disclosed (limited traction) | Not disclosed |
| Cécred | Beyoncé | 2024 | 100% founder-owned, self-funded | $200M+ (estimated) | Not disclosed |
What Separates the Winners
The brands generating hundreds of millions share common traits that the failures lack:
A product thesis, not a vanity project. Fenty’s thesis: the industry ignores women of color, and that’s a billion-dollar gap. Rare Beauty’s thesis: makeup should enhance, not mask, and mental health matters. Kylie’s thesis (initially): affordable, high-quality lip kits that millennials actually want. Every successful brand started with a clear observation about what the market was missing.
The brands that stalled — Halsey’s About Face, KKW Beauty, many others — launched products that were competent but didn’t answer the question “why does this need to exist?”
Genuine creative involvement. Rihanna is in Fenty’s product meetings. Selena Gomez personally tests Rare Beauty products and demonstrates them on social media. Hailey Bieber’s Rhode reflects her personal skincare philosophy. These founders aren’t signing off on products someone else made — they’re directing product development.
Contrast this with licensing deals where the celebrity’s involvement is limited to approvals and photo shoots. Those brands feel generic because they are.
An audience that matches the product. Kylie Jenner’s audience was beauty-obsessed. Rihanna’s audience trusted her taste. Selena Gomez’s audience connected with her vulnerability and authenticity, which mapped perfectly onto Rare Beauty’s mental health messaging.
When the audience-product fit is wrong, sales suffer. Haus Labs initially struggled on Amazon in 2019, but after a complete relaunch through Sephora in 2022, the brand reported 400% revenue growth, proving that the issue was distribution strategy, not audience fit. Gaga’s fanbase, which skews toward self-expression and performance, turned out to be a strong match once the brand found the right retail environment.
The right ownership structure. The richest celebrity founders own significant equity. Rihanna owns 50%. Selena Gomez owns a majority stake. Hailey Bieber is founder-owned. They’re not collecting licensing royalties — they’re building wealth through ownership.
The Kylie Cosmetics Story
Kylie Cosmetics deserves separate analysis because it demonstrates both what works and what goes wrong.
What worked (2015-2019): Kylie launched lip kits directly to consumers through her own website. No retail partner needed. Her 300+ million social media followers were the distribution channel. The brand reportedly generated $420 million in revenue in its first 18 months with a tiny team. It was the most capital-efficient beauty brand launch in history.
What went wrong (2020-present): Kylie sold 51% to Coty for $600 million in January 2020. After the sale, product quality issues emerged (reformulated products with mixed reviews), the brand lost its DTC exclusivity by entering Ulta Beauty, and Kylie’s personal involvement visibly decreased. Revenue has declined from its peak. Coty wrote down the value of its investment.
The lesson: the sale gave Kylie $600 million in cash, which is life-changing wealth. But the brand lost what made it special — the founder’s direct involvement and the exclusivity that made customers feel like insiders. This is the tension in every ownership vs. licensing decision: taking money off the table now vs. building long-term value.
Rare Beauty: The Post-Fenty Playbook
Rare Beauty launched in September 2020 and is now valued at over $2 billion. It followed Fenty’s blueprint but adapted it:
A cause that’s authentic. Rare Beauty’s tagline is “Makeup made to feel good in, without hiding what makes you unique.” Selena Gomez’s public struggles with lupus, anxiety, and depression make the mental health messaging genuine, not performative. The Rare Impact Fund donates 1% of sales to mental health services.
Product quality that earns repeat purchases. The Soft Pinch Liquid Blush became the #1 blush at Sephora. Products went viral on TikTok not because of paid promotions but because they performed well. Repeat purchases drive the revenue, not launch hype.
Sephora exclusive, then expand. Rare Beauty launched exclusively at Sephora, building prestige positioning before expanding to other retailers. This is the same playbook Fenty used.
The founder stays visible. Gomez regularly posts tutorials and product demonstrations on her personal social media. She doesn’t look like she’s reading a script. She looks like she’s showing a friend her favorite blush.
Why Most Celebrity Brands Fail
The failure rate is high. Most celebrity beauty brands follow this pattern:
- Launch hype. Big press coverage, influencer seeding, social media buzz. Strong first-month sales.
- Post-launch drop. Curiosity purchases end. Repeat purchases depend on product quality, which is often mediocre.
- Declining visibility. The celebrity moves on to other projects. Marketing becomes generic. The brand loses its personal touch.
- Shelf space pressure. Retailers drop underperforming brands to make room for new launches. Once you lose shelf space, recovery is nearly impossible.
- Quiet discontinuation. The brand stops releasing new products, distribution shrinks, and eventually it disappears.
This happened to Marc Jacobs Beauty (discontinued 2023, made by Kendo), Halsey’s About Face (limited distribution), and dozens of others.
The common thread: these brands didn’t have a reason to exist beyond the celebrity’s name. When the novelty wore off, there was nothing to sustain them.
What Non-Celebrities Can Learn
You don’t have 60 million Instagram followers. But the principles behind successful celebrity brands apply to independent founders:
Have a thesis. “I want to start a beauty brand” is not a business thesis. “Existing sunscreens leave a white cast on dark skin and I’m going to fix that” is. Every successful brand starts with a specific problem.
Match your audience to your product. If you have 5,000 Instagram followers who care about sustainable living, launch a product that aligns with that. An audience of 5,000 that trusts you will outperform an audience of 50,000 that doesn’t care.
Own the business. Celebrity brands work best when the celebrity owns equity rather than licensing their name. The same applies to you. Build your own brand. Own it fully. Don’t white-label someone else’s product and call it yours unless you’re using that as a stepping stone to developing your own formulations.
Stay involved. The brands that last are the ones where the founder stays visibly connected to the product and the customer. Whether you have 5,000 followers or 5 million, your visible involvement signals that the brand is real.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the most successful celebrity beauty brand ever?
Fenty Beauty by revenue and cultural impact. $602 million in annual revenue (2024), valued at $2-3 billion, and credited with forcing the entire industry to expand shade ranges.
Are celebrity beauty brands oversaturated?
Yes. The period from 2020-2023 saw the most celebrity beauty launches in history, and consumers are showing fatigue. New launches now face higher skepticism and need to work harder to prove they’re not another vanity project. The winners are brands launched before saturation peaked (Fenty, Rare Beauty) or brands with genuinely differentiated products.
Should I compete with celebrity beauty brands?
Not directly. You can’t outspend them on marketing. But you can serve niches they ignore. Celebrity brands target mass appeal. An independent brand targeting a specific underserved niche — a specific skin concern, a specific demographic, a specific ingredient philosophy — can build a loyal customer base that big brands can’t reach.
Sources
- Forbes, “The World’s Billionaires,” 2024. Revenue and valuation estimates for Fenty Beauty, Rare Beauty, and Kylie Cosmetics; net worth data for celebrity founders.
- Business of Fashion, “The Celebrity Beauty Bubble,” 2023. Analysis of celebrity brand success rates, structural factors separating winners from failures, and industry saturation data.
- SEC, Coty Inc. Form 10-K and 8-K Filings. Kylie Cosmetics acquisition terms, 51% stake price ($600M), and post-acquisition revenue and write-down disclosures.
- WWD, “Beauty Industry Tracker,” 2024. Brand revenue rankings, retail performance data, and launch coverage for Rare Beauty, Rhode, and Haus Labs.
- Cosmetics Business, “State of the Indie Beauty Market,” 2024. Indie brand market share data, shelf space trends, and celebrity brand failure patterns.
- Circana (formerly NPD Group), “Prestige Beauty Industry Report,” 2024. Category sales data, top-performing SKUs, and brand market share in prestige beauty.