Rihanna

Robyn Rihanna Fenty, known as Rihanna, was born on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados. She is the daughter of Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor, and Monica Fenty, an accountant of Afro-Guyanese origin, and is the eldest of three children; her younger brothers are Rorrey and Rajad Fenty.

She began singing around age seven. At fifteen, after attending Charles F. Broome Memorial School, she formed a trio with two classmates from Combermere School and won the Miss Combermere pageant the same year.

Her career took off in 2003 when her group was introduced to producer Evan Rogers while he was vacationing in Barbados; at an audition she sang Destiny’s Child’s cover of “Emotion”, which caught Rogers’ attention. Shortly after turning sixteen, she moved to the United States to live with Rogers and his wife in Stamford, Connecticut, to pursue her career.

With Carl Sturken she recorded a four-track demo including a cover of “For the Love of You” by Whitney Houston and what would become her first hit, “Pon de Replay”. The demo reached Def Jam Recordings, where she auditioned for the label’s president at the time, Jay-Z, who signed her immediately.

Rihanna broke through in 2005 with her debut album Music of the Sun, propelled by the single “Pon de Replay”, which reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Less than a year later her second album A Girl Like Me gave her a first number one with “SOS”, which samples “Tainted Love”, and the single “Unfaithful” also saw considerable success.

Her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, was released in June 2007. A multifaceted artist, Rihanna is also an actress, businesswoman, entrepreneur and fashion designer. Vocally she is classified as a lyric contralto with a range of three octaves and two notes.

Internationally recognized, she has achieved fourteen number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the second Barbadian artist to win a Grammy Award. She serves as a cultural ambassador for Barbados and was named a national heroine of her country in 2021, receiving the title “The Right Excellent”.