Hailey Bieber founded Rhode (her middle name) in 2022 with husband-and-wife duo Lauren and Michael D. Ratner.
Tim Tadder for Forbes
Model, social media star and beauty entrepreneur Hailey Bieber made headlines on Wednesday when publicly traded e.l.f. Beauty announced it will pay up to $1 billion to buy her makeup and skincare brand Rhode.
Despite some reports indicating otherwise, the 28-year-old Bieber, who is married to singer Justin Bieber, almost certainly won’t become a billionaire from the deal, which is structured to pay out $600 million in cash and $200 million in e.l.f. Beauty stock, with a potential $200 million future earnout over three years, depending on the brand’s post-acquisition performance. Bieber has two other cofounders at Rhode and at least two reported outside investors, who likely all have their own stakes in the three-year-old company. She could, however, walk away with nine figures, depending on her ownership stake. (A spokesperson for Bieber did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes.)
Still, the sale of Rhode marks one of the largest celebrity acquisitions in recent years – and ranks Rhode among an elite but growing group of beauty brands to fetch high price tags. All in all, Forbes counts fewer than 30 people in the U.S. and Europe who have made fortunes of $380 million or more in beauty.
Several of the richest people in beauty today inherited their wealth. This includes Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France, an heiress to the L’Oreal fortune who is worth $86 billion, by far the largest fortune to derive from a pure beauty company. Her grandfather, Eugene Schueller, founded what would become L’Oreal in 1909, and Francoise inherited her stake in 2017, following the death of her mother, Liliane Bettencourt. (Bettencourt Meyers is the second richest woman in the world after Walmart scion Alice Walton.) Also among the industry’s wealthiest are five members of the Lauder family, who are descendants of Estée Lauder, founder of what today is a $15.6 billion (revenue) giant with more than 20 beauty brands..
A handful of entrepreneurs – like Bieber – built their own brands and cashed out. That includes Jamie Kern Lima, the founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics, who sold her company in 2016 to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion. Romanian-born entrepreneur Anastasia Soare sold a minority stake in Anastasia Beverly Hills to private equity firm TPG in a deal that valued the company at $3 billion in 2018. Also that year, dermatologists Kathy Fields and Katie Rodan sold a 25% stake in Rodan + Fields to TPG for $1 billion; TPG later sold a majority of the business for an undisclosed sum.
Other high-profile deals include Kylie Jenner’s sale of 51% of Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million to publicly traded beauty conglomerate Coty, and her half-sister Kim Kardashian’s sale of a 20% stake in her skincare line SKKN by Kim for $200 million in 2021.
Though buzzy, these deals don’t always pan out, which may be one reason why the appetite for buying them seems to have dwindled in recent years. For example, after defaulting on some of its debt, Rodan + Fields was taken over by its creditors Oaktree Capital and Arbour Lane last September. Also facing challenges is Anastasia Beverly Hills, which saw its credit rating downgraded by S&P Global in January 2024 due to forecasted cash flow deficits and looming debt repayment.
In March, Coty announced it had sold its 20% stake in SKKN by Kim; the buyer was Kardashian’s shapewear firm Skims. Coty reported that it took a $71 million loss when it divested the stake.
With additional reporting by Gigi Zamora.