Fenty Beauty: The One That Changed the Industry
Rihanna's Fenty Beauty, launched in 2017, is widely credited with fundamentally shifting how the entire beauty industry approaches shade inclusivity. The brand launched with 40 foundation shades at a time when most major makeup lines offered a fraction of that range, and the move forced competitors across the industry to expand their own shade offerings in response, a shift beauty journalists have referred to as the "Fenty Effect."
Beyond the inclusivity angle, Fenty's products have consistently earned strong reviews from beauty publications and everyday users alike, particularly its foundation formulas and the Gloss Bomb lip gloss, which became one of the brand's signature bestsellers. Fenty Beauty is generally regarded within the beauty industry as one of the rare celebrity brands that succeeded on genuine product quality and innovation, not just its founder's fame.
Rare Beauty: Built Around a Real Mission
Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty launched in 2020 with a specific focus on inclusive shade ranges and a brand mission tied closely to mental health awareness, including the brand's Rare Impact Fund, which commits a percentage of sales to mental health resources and education. The brand's Soft Pinch Liquid Blush became a genuine breakout product, frequently cited in beauty media as one of the most successful cross-demographic product launches from a celebrity-founded brand in recent years.
Reviewers have generally praised Rare Beauty's formulas as easy to use for makeup beginners while still holding up for more experienced users, a balance that's harder to strike than it sounds. The brand's consistent messaging around authenticity and mental health has also helped it maintain credibility beyond a typical celebrity product launch cycle.
Rhode: Minimalist Skincare With Real Staying Power
Hailey Bieber's Rhode launched in 2022 with a small, tightly curated skincare and lip product lineup rather than the sprawling catalog many celebrity brands launch with. This more focused approach has generally worked in the brand's favor, with products like the Peptide Lip Treatment gaining significant organic popularity on social media, driven largely by genuine user demonstrations rather than paid promotion alone.
Beauty industry coverage has generally noted that Rhode's formulas skew toward straightforward, effective skincare basics rather than flashy or gimmicky products, which has helped the brand maintain a reputation for quality even as it's expanded its product range over time.
Haus Labs: A Comeback Story Worth Noting
Lady Gaga's Haus Labs originally launched in 2019 to a mixed reception, but the brand underwent a significant relaunch in 2023 with a renewed focus on skin-first, ingredient-conscious formulas, including its widely discussed Triclone Skin Tech Foundation. This relaunch generated notably more positive coverage from beauty publications than the brand's original iteration, with several reviewers specifically noting genuine improvement in formula quality and innovation compared to the earlier version of the brand.
Haus Labs is a useful example of how celebrity beauty brands aren't necessarily locked into their initial reception. A brand can meaningfully improve its actual product quality and industry standing well after its original launch, which isn't always the case in this space.
Where Some Celebrity Beauty Brands Have Struggled
Not every celebrity beauty launch has aged as well. Several brands from the mid-2010s celebrity beauty boom launched with strong initial buzz built almost entirely around their founder's name recognition, only to see interest and product lines shrink significantly within a few years once the novelty faded and the underlying formulas didn't hold up to closer scrutiny from beauty reviewers and everyday consumers. This pattern has become common enough that beauty industry commentators frequently point to inconsistent formula quality, rather than the celebrity attachment itself, as the actual determining factor in which brands last and which fade.
The brands that have shown genuine staying power, Fenty, Rare Beauty, Rhode, and the relaunched Haus Labs among them, generally share a few common traits: a clear brand identity beyond just the celebrity's name, consistent formula quality that holds up under independent review, and in several cases, a specific mission or niche that gives the brand a reason to exist beyond simple celebrity merchandising.
What This Means for Shoppers
The overall pattern suggests that celebrity involvement alone doesn't predict whether a beauty brand is actually good, what matters is whether the brand invested in genuine product development and a clear identity, or leaned primarily on the celebrity's existing fame to drive initial sales. Checking independent reviews from beauty publications and everyday users, rather than assuming quality based on a founder's celebrity status alone, remains the most reliable way to separate the brands that have earned their reputation from the ones riding on name recognition.
FAQ
Are celebrity beauty brands usually more expensive than comparable non-celebrity brands? Pricing varies significantly by brand and product category, though many of the most successful celebrity beauty brands, including Fenty Beauty and Rare Beauty, are generally positioned in a similar mid-range price tier to other prestige beauty brands rather than carrying a dramatically higher celebrity premium.
Do celebrities actually help formulate their own beauty products? Level of involvement varies significantly by brand and celebrity. Some founders, like Rihanna with Fenty Beauty, have been widely reported as closely involved in product development and shade range decisions, while other celebrity brands rely more heavily on established formulation labs with less day-to-day founder involvement.
Is shade range inclusivity still a differentiator among newer celebrity beauty brands? Largely because of the standard Fenty Beauty helped set, extensive shade ranges have become a much more common baseline expectation across the beauty industry rather than a distinguishing feature unique to celebrity brands specifically.
đź“š Sources
Allure, "The Fenty Effect: How Rihanna's Brand Changed Beauty" – https://www.allure.com/story/fenty-beauty-effect-inclusivity
Byrdie, "Rare Beauty Review" – https://www.byrdie.com/rare-beauty-review
Vogue, "Haus Labs Relaunch Review" – https://www.vogue.com/article/haus-labs-lady-gaga-relaunch
