Selena Gomez

Gomez was a Disney Channel star at fifteen, a recording artist with a run of hit albums after that, and by the late 2010s one of the most-followed people on Instagram. She was also unusually open about her own mental health, including a bipolar diagnosis she discussed publicly, and that history is the part of her biography that made Rare Beauty more than another licence. The company was registered in California in February 2019 and announced a year later; she said at the time that she had spent two years building it with a team of 28 people. The name came from her 2020 album, Rare.

The launch in September 2020 made three choices that look obvious only in hindsight. It went into Sephora as an exclusive rather than selling direct from a celebrity's website, which gave a new brand the most credible shelf in beauty on day one. It led with a wide 48-shade foundation range, by then the minimum a brand needed after Fenty Beauty reset the category. And it attached a pledge to raise $100 million for youth mental health over ten years, funded in part by one percent of sales. The cause did what the founder's face could not: it gave the brand a subject other than her.

The contested parts are about dependence and about time. Gomez is not the operator; Scott Friedman, a beauty executive who previously ran NYX, runs the company day to day, and the honest description of her role is founder, owner and its most powerful marketing channel. Bloomberg's 2024 estimate put roughly $1.1 billion of her $1.3 billion fortune in the brand, assuming a 51% stake. In 2024 she let bankers test a sale at about $2 billion; no buyer met the price, and in October 2025 she said she was not ready to sell. Whether that is conviction or a price that has not arrived yet is not knowable from outside. She also co-founded Wondermind, a separate mental-health media venture, and the two businesses should not be confused.