Rihanna's extraordinary life: pregnant at the Super Bowl!
Rihanna is a world-famous singer, a millionaire, and a happy mom. She made headlines with her 2023 Super Bowl halftime show, revealing that she's pregnant with her second child.
Rihanna is followed by the media for both her personal and professional news: whether it's the Super Bowl show, her status as one of the richest artists in the industry, her Fenty make-up and fashion brand, or her relationship with A$AP Rocky and their first baby.
How did the singer manage to go from a modest neighborhood in Barbados to flying private jets and living in luxury in Beverly Hills?
The woman who may be the most important pop singer of the new millennium has a background in Barbados.
Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born on February 20, 1988 in Saint Michael, Barbados. She grew up in Bridgetown. Her mother, Monica Braithwaite, was an Afro-Guyanese accountant. Her father, Ronald Fenty, was a warehouse supervisor with African and Irish descent.
The world-class singer has a modest background on the Caribbean island. Barbados is marked by sugar cane plantations and a history of slavery. On the image: Rihanna's home town of St. Michael.
The diva owes her green eyes to the Irish ancestry of her paternal grandmother.
Her family was initially quite normal. Her parents both loved her very much. The quiet life ended, however, when her father started abusing drugs. For most of Rihanna's childhood, her father drank. He and her mother separated after years of domestic violence and other issues.
After Rihanna's father left the family home, Monica had to raise her three children alone. Robyn (Rihanna), being the oldest, had to take care of the two young ones. In this image, her mother and brother are the two persons in the middle.
Ronald, her father, still lives in Barbados and the relationship between him and his daughter has been close. Sometimes it gets turbulent, though, because of his alcohol problems.
Barbados has never had anyone comparable to Rihanna in world fame. And it shows. Her image is all over the country. As an ambassador for the island, she receives visitors at Grantley Adams Airport with a giant poster hanging from the ceiling.
Rihanna likes to go back to her home town, even though she doesn't always have time for it. A few years ago she bought a house on One Sandy Lane, one of the most exclusive areas on an already exclusive island. She paid 22 million dollars.
She has been spotted at the Crop Festival, the local carnival that the island celebrates every August. In addition, she was declared a National Hero of Barbados in November 2021.
When Rihanna traveled to Barbados with Oprah Winfrey in 2013, she revealed that her mother doesn't like gifts. If they're too expensive, she'll give them back, Rihanna said.
But in that same Oprah show, she offered her mom a present that was hard to refuse: a five-bedroom luxury villa.
Rihanna's career began when she travelled to Connecticut with producer Evan Rogers at age 16. She recorded a demo of four songs and impressed Jay-Z, who immediately offered her a contract for six albums with his studio.
In 2005, Rihanna released her debut album, 'Music of the Sun.' By 2007, it had sold a million copies.
By 2007 she had a major hit song on her hands with 'Umbrella,' a single from the album 'Good Girl Gone Bad.' Rihanna won a Grammy awards for that unforgettable song.
Other chart-topping singles included 'Only Girl (in the World)', 'Diamonds,' 'Work,' and her cooperation with rapper Eminem in 'Love the Way You Lie.'
In 2012 she debuted as an actress in the film 'Battleship'. She was awarded a Teen Choice Award for 'Newcomer Actress.'
When she was young, her mother wouldn't let Rihanna wear make-up. Nowadays, the star has a makeup agency for models and a product line called Fenty.
In 2006, at just 18 and halfway through her metamorphosis from Robyn to superstar Rihanna, she founded the Believe Foundation. This is an organization to help terminally ill children.
In 2012, she donated $1.75 million to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown for the purchase of radiotherapy equipment. That same year she created the Clara-Lionel Foundation, named after her grandparents.
The foundation offers donations to schools and institutes on the island to purchase supplies and after-school programs, as well as scholarships to students from Barbados, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Guyana, and the United States.
Rihanna's net value is estimated at 1.7 billion dollars. Forbes claims that in 2015, when she had not released a new album in three years, she still earned 26 million dollars.
Among the achievements of the star is a Guinness Record for having the highest digital sales of all time. With 47.5 million copies sold, Rihanna has become the second artist in the United States to sell more digital than analogue versions of an album.
Rihanna was the first black woman to star in a campaign for Dior.
The singer has more than 20 tattoos. One of them is a phrase that matches her life story very well: "Never a failure, always a lesson".
In 2021, Rihanna experienced big changes in her personal life. She started dating rapper A$AP Rocky - whose real name is Rakim Mayers - and the relationship got very serious very fast.
In January 2022, the celebrity couple, both 33 years old, announced to the world that they were going to be parents. They did so in a spectacular way: Rihanna simply posed for photographers bare-bellied.
(Image: screenshot from Instagram, Rihanna's account @badgalriri)
The couple revealed their impending parenthood without words - just with a lot of pride. Their son, born in May 2022, was the first child for both artists.
Before the baby was born, however, A$AP Rocky was arrested on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon. According to People magazine, the LAPD alleges that Rocky fired a gun at an acquaintance after an argument on November 6 in Hollywood.
The rapper was released the same day on $550,000 bail, but he still has the charge hanging over his head. On August 16, the rapper appeared before the court and pleaded not guilty. He remains free until the next court date on November 2.
Well, she is focusing on her family right now: her baby boy and the legal issues of its father. For that reason, Hollywood Life reported in July 2022, any release of new music is "taking a backseat." Let's hope, though, that she will continue to live by her adagio: 'Please don't stop the music!'