Rihanna

Musician

• Born: February 20, 1988
• Place of Birth: St. Michael, Barbados

SINGER

Known for her edgy musical style and avant-garde fashion sense, Rihanna became a major influence in pop culture. After her involvement in an abusive relationship become public, she quickly became a spokesperson against domestic violence. She also later earned attention for her humanitarian and diplomatic efforts.

AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Music: hip-hop; Music: Latin, Caribbean, and reggae; Music: pop; Music: rhythm and blues

Early Life

Rihanna was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in St. Michael, Barbados. She was the oldest of three children born to Ronald and Monica Fenty. While attending the prestigious Combermere School, one of the top secondary schools in the Caribbean, Rihanna began her performing career. She acted in musicals and sang in a musical trio. At the age of fifteen, she performed "Hero" by Mariah Carey en route to winning the Miss Combermere Pageant.

During a visit to Barbados, music executive Evan Rogers was introduced to Rihanna by a mutual friend. Rogers, impressed by Rihanna’s talent, helped her make her first recording. At age sixteen, Rihanna went to New York City to meet with hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, who was president of Def Jam Recordings in 2004. Jay-Z signed her to a contract, and Rihanna released her first album, Music of the Sun, in 2005. The album mixed pop and soul with a dancehall influence reflecting her Caribbean roots.

Career in Entertainment and Fashion

Rihanna’s debut album, Music of the Sun, went to number ten on the Billboard charts. The album featured the single "Pon de Replay," which peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Her second album, A Girl Like Me, debuted in 2006 and featured her first number-one single, "S.O.S." The single was used in a Nike advertising campaign and cemented Rihanna’s mainstream popularity.

In 2007, Rihanna released another successful album, Good Girl Gone Bad, which peaked at number two on the Billboard charts. The album included two number-one singles, "Umbrella," featuring Jay-Z, and "Disturbia." The next year, "Umbrella" won the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Rihanna also won two American Music Awards in 2008. Although previous albums had created buzz for the singer, Good Girl Gone Bad launched Rihanna into international popularity.

However, Rihanna’s success quickly was overshadowed by violence. Just before the 2009 Grammy Awards, Rihanna and then-boyfriend Chris Brown, a popular rhythm-and-blues singer, both canceled their performances. It was then later reported that Brown had assaulted Rihanna the night before, after the couple left a pre-Grammy party. This incident drew major media coverage, and a police photo of Rihanna’s battered face was leaked online. Brown later pleaded guilty to assault.

After keeping a low profile for several months, Rihanna returned to the recording studio to work on a new album. She released Rated R, which critics have called her darkest album, in 2009. The album spawned a string of hit singles, including number ones "Hard" and "Rude Boy."

In 2010, Rihanna won her second Grammy Award for her featured performance in the single "Run This Town" along with Jay-Z and Kanye West. Later that year, she released her fourth album, Loud, which featured the number-one single "Only Girl (in the World)." The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart.

Rihanna went on to release the albums Talk That Talk in 2011 and Unapologetic in 2012. A series of singles—"We Found Love," "Diamonds," "Stay," "Jump," and "FourFiveSeconds"—all topped charts, but her next album, Anti, would not come out until early 2016. Despite several delays and a "surprise" release due to a leak, Anti proved to be Rihanna's second full-length album to reach the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Musically, it represented something of a departure from her previous works, with more of a self-reflective, downbeat bent.

By 2016, Rihanna had taken home eight Grammy Awards, including four for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, one for Best Short Form Music Video, one for Best Dance Recording, and one for Best Urban Contemporary Album. She added a ninth Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Performance in 2018 for her work on "Loyalty" by Kendrick Lamar. By 2018 she had also won twelve Billboard Music Awards and thirteen American Music Awards.

Rihanna also ventured into acting, with appearances in the sci-fi adventures Battleship (2012) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), the heist movie Ocean's 8 (2018), and the musical Guava Island (2019).

While Rihanna’s music career grew, she became a style icon for her generation. Her unusual and avant-garde outfits brought her to the attention of the fashion world, and she participated in benefits such as Fashion Against AIDS (in which she designed a T-shirt for retailer H&M) and modeled in a Gucci ad benefiting the United Nations Children’s Fund. Rihanna also signed a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, a rarity for African American musicians. In 2009, she appeared on the cover of the influential September issue of Vogue Italia. In 2014 she was presented with a lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America for her role as a fashion icon. That same year she became Puma's creative director for women's athletic wear.

Between 2017 and 2019, Rihanna established three notable product lines of her own: Fenty Beauty cosmetics, catering to a wide array of skin tones; Savage X Fenty, a size-, color-, and gender-inclusive lingerie line; and Fenty, a women's clothing and accessory brand through the European conglomerate LVMH, making her the first Black woman to head a major luxury fashion company. The latter failed to gain as much traction as the former and was closed in 2021, though her Fenty x Puma collaboration returned in 2023.

In May 2022, Rihanna had a son with musician A$AP Rocky. In September of that year, Rihanna announced that she was headlining the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show. The following month, Rihanna released the single "Lift Me Up'" as part of the soundtrack of Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, ending nearly a six-year hiatus from releasing new music and garnering her an Oscar nomination. At the Halftime Show in February 2023, Rihanna revealed her pregnancy to the world, performing a number of her greatest hits from a platform suspended in the air. It was the first time in four years she had performed in public.

As Rihanna solidified her superstar status, she also expanded her charity and humanitarian work. Among her initiatives were programs benefiting children with terminal illness, HIV/AIDS awareness, cancer research, and women's rights. She founded the Clara Lionel Foundation, named after her grandparents, in 2012 to coordinate charitable activities. Rihanna also took on diplomatic duties when she was named a government ambassador for Barbados in September 2018, charged with promoting tourism, investment, and education.

Significance

The most successful musician to come from Barbados, Rihanna won numerous awards and influenced the music and fashion world with her unique style and chart-topping songs. Additionally, she became known for her work on social and humanitarian issues. After her assault at the hands of Brown in 2009, Rihanna spoke out against domestic violence, particularly as it affects young women. In a television interview, Rihanna urged girls in abusive relationships to speak out and remove themselves from the situation. In recognition of her wide-ranging social impact, she was named to Time magazine's list of the world's most influential people in both 2012 and 2018, designated the Harvard University Foundation's Humanitarian of the Year 2017, and honored with the 2020 NAACP President's Award.

Bibliography

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Frank, Mary Kate. Rihanna. Stevens, 2010.

Hattersley, Giles. "Rihanna Reborn: How a Megastar Became a Mother." British Vogue, 15 Feb. 2023, www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/rihanna-british-vogue-interview. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

James, Robin. "’Robo-Diva R&B’: Aesthetics, Politics, and Black Female Robots in Contemporary Popular Music." Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 2008, pp. 402–23.

Rihanna. "More from Rihanna’s Interview with Vogue." Interview by Abby Aguirre. Vogue, 24 Mar. 2016, www.vogue.com/article/rihanna-vogue-interview-anti-drake-work-puma-fenty. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

Rihanna. "A Very Revealing Conversation with Rihanna." Interview by Miranda July. T: The New York Times Magazine, 12 Oct. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

Rihanna. Rihanna: The Last Girl on Earth. Photographs by Simon Henwood. Rizzoli, 2010.

"Rihanna Appointed as Ambassador by Barbados." BBC News, 22 Sept. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45609656. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

Robinson, Roxanne. “Why Rihanna’s Fenty Clothing Line Has Been Put to an End.” Forbes, 13 Dec. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/roxannerobinson/2021/02/11/why-rihannas-fenty-clothing-line-has-been-put-to-an-end/?sh=20a50a632e2b. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025. ‌

Sandell, Laurie. "Rihanna: Back on Top!" Glamour, 2 Nov. 2009, www.glamour.com/story/rihanna. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

Sottile, Zoe, and Matt Foster. "Rihanna Will Headline the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show.' CNN Entertainment, 25 Sept. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/09/25/entertainment/rihanna-nfl-superbowl-halftime-show-spt/index.html. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.