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Rishabh Jain
Managing Director
Fenty Beauty | Confetti's Verdict ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Confetti Design Studio has analysed the product architecture, packaging system and category strategy of Fenty Beauty. The brand that made forty foundation shades the global beauty industry standard.
Launched on 8 September 2017 across seventeen countries simultaneously through Sephora, it was built on a 50/50 ownership partnership between Rihanna and LVMH. And generated approximately $100 million in its first forty days.
The brand held steady at more than $550 million a year for several years before net sales slipped to roughly $450 million in 2024. Now LVMH is exploring selling its half of the business at a price well below the $2.8 billion.
The audit explores whether Fenty can find its next big argument, the way it once found shade inclusivity, before LVMH finishes deciding who owns the brand's future. This audit is as per September 2026.
Before 2017, prestige foundation ranges had roughly twenty shades, and then Fenty launched with forty, later expanding to fifty.
But the category event was the merchandising, with darker shades positioned front and centre rather than appearing at the end of a range.
The technology to produce those shades already existed, and the data already showed Black women spending 80% more on cosmetics. So the sector had the capability and the evidence.
Fenty’s argument was that serving those customers was profitable rather than charitable, and it proved the point with roughly $100 million in revenue in forty days and $570 million across 2018.
The Pro Filt’r foundation bottle has a hexagonal shape. And that geometry runs through their lip gloss tubes, octagonal compacts and angular retail fixtures, a shape that tessellates so bottles pack tightly on shelves with no wasted space.
Shapes that interlock without any one of them being the default is a precise visual argument for the brand.
It has held the range together across foundation, gloss and compacts for eight years without feeling dated, which is the real test of packaging design.
New beauty brands launch in one market, prove the model, and then expand.
Fenty launched simultaneously in seventeen countries through an exclusive Sephora partnership which is rare for a new beauty brand.
Rihanna’s audience, around sixty million on Instagram at the time, was global from day one. And a phased rollout would have generated demand in markets where the product could not be bought.
Kendo Brands, LVMH’s in-house beauty incubator, supplied the manufacturing and distribution capability which an individual founder could not have built in eighteen months. The partnership was designed around what each side could actually contribute.
The standard celebrity beauty arrangement is a licensing deal. A name is rented for a royalty while someone else operates the brand entirely.
Rihanna secured a 50/50 ownership partnership with LVMH in 2016, and posted her own tutorials and product demonstrations. Instead of handing this off to a social media manager, she acted as a real creative partner in the day-to-day work.
The brand spent almost nothing on traditional advertising and instead ran influencer seeding across the full range of skin tones, generating $72 million in earned media value in the first month, and #FentyFace has since passed 4.5 million posts.
Celebrity beauty brands most of the time spike and fade. Holding more than $550 million in annual revenue for several consecutive years is the strongest evidence that the ownership structure is what matters.
Within eighteen months of launch, three major rivals followed.
Maybelline Fit Me, CoverGirl TruBlend Matte and Dior Backstage all launched forty shade foundation ranges.
Fenty extended its own mission and expanded into skincare in 2020, fragrance in 2021, haircare in 2024 and body care in 2025. Each category arriving under the same founding idea.
Fenty made itself a large business and permanently raised the floor for every competitor at once, which means millions of consumers can now buy a foundation that matches them. Very few brands in any category can claim that and Fenty Beauty happens to be one of them.
Fenty Beauty started with something Rihanna had run into again and again over her years in the beauty industry. There still weren't products that truly worked across every skin tone, skin type, or hair texture.
So she built what didn't exist.
The name is her own, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, known to the world as Rihanna and from day one, this was never just makeup.
It was her brand’s mission to make foundations that finally put every tone on the map and colour built to be worn freely and however someone wanted to wear it.
From there, it grew. Fenty Skin brought simple, uncomplicated care to prep the skin before makeup. Fenty Hair was built to keep hair healthy through every style change. And Fenty Fragrance came bold and unmistakable, just like the woman behind it.
But one thing runs through all of it; everyone, every tone, every background, gets to feel seen. This is the whole reason it exists.
Forty shades was a radical act in 2017, but it is an unremarkable baseline in 2026.
Every meaningful competitor in mass and prestige now offers a comparable range. So the single thing that made Fenty stand out has become the price of entry for everybody.
Adding ten more shades doesn't bring back the edge Fenty had when forty shades felt like a big deal. The brand needs a new argument, just as powerful and convincing but it hasn't found one yet.
Holding more than $550 million annually for several consecutive years is rare longevity for a celebrity beauty brand.
Net sales slipped to roughly $450 million in 2024, and Q1 2025 showed another decline. Reported valuation talks for LVMH's stake now sit between $1 and 2 billion, well below the $2.8 billion Forbes once attributed to the brand back in 2021.
High-end beauty is widely seen as entering a slower, more mature phase. That means a brand that's losing momentum can't just wait around for the category to lift it back up.
LVMH retained Evercore in October 2025 to explore a sale of its 50% stake.
That is the operating half that supplies manufacturing, supply chain and global distribution.
Jay-Z's MarcyPen Capital Partners emerged in June 2026 as the leading bidder. The firm already has ties to Rihanna's business world through earlier investments in Savage X Fenty, though no deal has been finalised.
Whoever ends up owning that half determines whether Fenty gets an operator capable of building a second act or a financial owner content to manage a plateau.
Fenty’s Logo is clean, lowercase and minimal, competent for the era it launched in.
Shown on its own, the wordmark doesn't signal Fenty the way the hexagon does, once someone actually knows the brand. It's safe, but it's riding on the packaging system and the founder's fame, not standing out as an asset on its own.
The Instagram feed has the same problem at a larger scale. The feed mixes Rihanna, user content and product launches in a way that is similar to Rare Beauty or Kylie Cosmetics. A brand with a genuinely distinctive meaning isn't using its biggest and the most frequent channel to say any of it.
Fenty’s first argument was that the beauty industry was not addressing a segment of people who buy makeup.
It was true, specific and commercially provable, and it is now settled. So the brand’s central task is to find another one.
The second argument has to be just as specific and just as easy to check as the first one. Inclusivity worked because it showed up as forty real shades, displayed a certain way, not because the brand simply said it cared.
The geometric system is the most defensible asset Fenty owns. Today it performs one function that is recognition.
Shape, finish and weight, and how the pieces relate to each other, can tell complexion apart from colour, and everyday from premium, while still looking like one family. That way, customers can find their way around a huge range just by looking, no label required.
That same hexagon could stretch into the logo, into repeating patterns and iconography across the brand, and carried through onto the packaging. That way the shape becomes something customers recognise everywhere,
This matters more when the celebrity signal fades. A design system that can carry meaning on its own gives the brand something to stand on.
Fenty Beauty is the most consequential beauty launch of the century, and its significance is not only commercial.
Launching forty shades across seventeen countries on a single day in September 2017, with the deepest shades merchandised at the front.
This proved that the whole beauty industry had been missing out for decades because it never bothered to. Maybelline, CoverGirl and Dior all followed within eighteen months.
Now comes the hard part that follows every big win. Forty shades used to be remarkable but now it's just expected. Revenue has cooled since its 2018 peak, and LVMH is exploring selling its half of the business, the half that actually runs things day-to-day. Jay-Z's MarcyPen Capital Partners is the leading bidder so far, but no deal has been finalised.
If you are building a makeup brand and want a design branding visuals and packaging that reflects your vision of starting a beauty brand, we exactly help with that. Get in touch with our team at Confetti.
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