Many of today’s younger generations fell in love with Selena Gomez following her turn as Alex Russo on Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place. The show’s meteoric success, and her subsequent music career, cemented Gomez’s place among Young Hollywood’s elite. But it is the way she has leveraged this visibility that truly defines the artist’s brand. Gomez has long been cited as a healthy role model for young girls, largely avoiding many of the pitfalls of childhood fame. Leaning into this wholesome image, Gomez quickly became the most followed woman on Instagram, currently touting 424 million followers.

Then, she turned those clicks into cash. Despite Gomez’s recent Emmy nomination for her work on Only Murders in the Building, and her upcoming turn as Linda Ronstadt in a feature film, the majority of Gomez’s wealth comes from a variety of diverse businesses that leverage her carefully constructed brand.

In 2017, Gomez entered into one of her first high-profile brand deals with Puma, earning a reported $30 million over two years. She has also worked with Coach and Louis Vuitton, each deal estimated at $10 million.

Later, Gomez launched Wondermind at the end of 2022, a start-up aimed at making mental-health resources more widely available. This effort resonates with her years of mental health activism, following a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

But the vast majority of Gomez’s $1.3 billion fortune comes from her stake in Rare Beauty, a cosmetics company marketed as simple and affordable, as well as cloaked in her signature brand of positivity. The brands’ hero product, a liquid blush, sold 3.1 million units in 2022 alone, raising Rare Beauty’s total valuation to $2 billion in early 2024.

And she has protected her stake in the company well, keeping the cosmetics company largely independent, with no current plans to sell. Meanwhile, Gomez has continued to use her own influence to create inexpensive but highly effective marketing for the brand, including hours of footage featuring Rare Beauty products in her non-scripted series, the HBO cooking show Selena + Chef.

Still, experts caution overenthusiasm in such a young company. Celebrity-backed companies often go through phases of hypervisibility, but this achievement alone is not a guarantee of long-term growth. Many others have shuttered their beauty brands recently, Adison Rae and Kristen Bell among them. For Gomez, only time will tell.

Discussion Questions 

1. Is Selena Gomez’s current business portfolio diversified enough to protect her long-term valuation? Why or why not?
2. What would be some market signs that would signal the prudence of selling her shares in Rare Beauty?

Sources: Diana Li, “Selena Gomez Is a Billionaire Thanks to Her Beauty Brand,” Bloomberg, September 6, 2024; Julia Wray, “Selena Gomez Joins Beauty’s Billionaire Club,” Cosmetics Business, September 9, 2024; Kevin E G Perry, “Selena Gomez Is Officially a Billionaire—and It’s Not Thanks to Hollywood,” The Independent, September 6, 2024