How Celebrity Beauty Brands Changed the Beauty Industry (And Made Everyone Step Up Their Game)
Celebrity beauty brands like Fenty Beauty, Rare Beauty, and Rhode have transformed the beauty industry through inclusivity, social media, founder-led branding, viral products, and a whole lot of cultural influence.
Celebrities Stopped Selling the Dream and Started Owning It
There was a time when celebrities simply smiled beautifully in a makeup advertisement, collected a check, and went home. Cute. Quaint. Practically historical. Today, celebrities are launching entire beauty companies, shaping product development, controlling branding, building communities, and occasionally creating products that sell out before the rest of us have even found our credit cards.
Celebrity beauty brands have helped shift the industry from traditional endorsement deals toward founder-led brands where personality, lifestyle, social media, and products all become part of the same package.
Fenty Beauty Made Inclusivity Impossible to Ignore
Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty is one of the clearest examples of a celebrity brand actually changing industry expectations rather than simply adding another lipstick to Sephora. When Fenty launched in 2017, its Pro Filt’r foundation arrived in 40 shades, with campaigns deliberately showcasing a wide range of skin tones.
TIME later described the competitive response as the “Fenty Effect,” as more beauty companies expanded their complexion offerings. Translation: suddenly, launching twelve shades of beige and calling it “inclusive” became much harder to defend.
Celebrity Brands Learned to Sell a Feeling, Not Just Foundation
Then came brands such as Rare Beauty, founded by Selena Gomez, which demonstrated that modern beauty branding could revolve around something bigger than flawless skin. Rare Beauty openly connects its brand identity with self-acceptance, individuality, community, and mental well-being.
The company also states that 1% of its annual sales goes to the Rare Impact Fund to help expand access to mental-health services. In other words, consumers are increasingly being invited to buy into a brand's values and community—not simply debate whether they need yet another blush. Spoiler: somehow, we always decide that we do.
Social Media Became the New Beauty Counter
Celebrity founders also arrived with something traditional beauty companies spent enormous amounts of money trying to build... attention. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, tutorials, GRWM videos, celebrity routines, viral packaging, and influencer reviews can turn one product into a cultural event almost overnight.
Hailey Bieber’s Rhode became a particularly powerful example of celebrity, aesthetic branding, skincare, and social-media culture working together. Its business value became difficult to dismiss when e.l.f. Beauty announced a deal in 2025 to acquire Rhode for up to $1 billion, including $800 million in initial consideration and a potential $200 million earnout. That is rather more serious than celebrity merch with moisturizer inside.
The Celebrity Name Is No Longer Enough
There is one inconvenient detail, of course: consumers have gotten smarter. A famous face may get people to click, but the product still has to perform. Celebrity beauty brands now compete on formulas, packaging, shade ranges, customer experience, authenticity, social values, and whether TikTok decides a lip treatment is a personality trait this week. The strongest brands succeed because the celebrity identity feels connected to the product rather than pasted onto it like an expensive sticker.
So, Did Celebrity Beauty Brands Really Change Beauty?
Absolutely. Celebrity beauty brands helped make inclusivity more visible, founder personalities more important, social media more powerful, product launches more cultural, and beauty companies more accountable to highly vocal consumers. Fenty demonstrated that representation could be commercially powerful. Rare Beauty showed how beauty branding could incorporate emotional and social impact. Rhode proved that a celebrity-founded brand could grow into an acquisition target valued in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.
The beauty industry gained more celebrity names... with an entirely different playbook. And judging by the speed at which the next viral blush, gloss, serum, peptide treatment, or suspiciously photogenic phone case appears, that playbook is nowhere near finished.
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References
TIME — Fenty Beauty Is One of TIME's 50 Genius Companies 2018
TIME — Rihanna on Building a Beauty Empire: “I’m Going To Push the Boundaries in This Industry”
Rare Beauty — About Rare Beauty
Rare Beauty — Rare Impact
Rare Beauty — Rare Impact Fund / 1% of Annual Sales
e.l.f. Beauty — Definitive Agreement to Acquire rhode in $1 Billion Deal
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — e.l.f. Beauty / Rhode acquisition filing
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