Rihanna’s beauty business took home wins across makeup, skin care and hair care at Allure’s 2026 Best of Beauty Awards, with Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin and Fenty Hair each landing a top honor in their category. The sweep lands during a milestone year for the awards themselves, marking the 30th anniversary of Allure’s annual list, which recognized 319 products across the industry this cycle.
What products actually won
Fenty Beauty’s Shake ‘N Play Buildable Liquid Blush took Best Liquid Blush, praised for its natural, skin like finish and a tightly curated five shade range that held up through a full day of wear. Fenty Skin’s Dew N Plump Intense Hydration Slushie Mask earned Best Hydrating Mask, built around a cooling gel formula packed with cherry and starfruit juices, watermelon seed oil and hyaluronic acid. Fenty Hair rounded out the sweep with the Imposter Invisi-Boost Volumizing Dry Shampoo taking Best Dry Shampoo Powder, a lilac tinted formula designed to absorb oil and add lift on third or fourth day hair.
Why this sweep completes a full circle moment
Rihanna’s relationship with Allure’s Best of Beauty franchise didn’t start this year. Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 with 40 foundation shades, a move that forced an entire industry accustomed to limited shade ranges to rethink its approach almost overnight, and Allure recognized that shift by putting Rihanna on its Best of Beauty cover the following year with a Breakthrough Award. Eight years later, during the franchise’s 30th anniversary run, three separate arms of the business she built off that original disruption are each winning on their own individual merit rather than riding a single signature launch.
How the Fenty business has grown since that first shade range
What began as a single foundation line has become a three brand operation spanning makeup, skin care since 2020 and hair care since 2024. That expansion mirrors a broader pattern among beauty founders who use an initial breakout product to build a wider ecosystem, but Fenty’s continued recognition across categories suggests the brand has kept its formulas competitive rather than simply trading on name recognition from the original launch.
What Rihanna has been up to beyond the beauty counter
The awards land during a busy stretch for Rihanna outside her business ventures. She appeared earlier this year in W magazine’s Pop Issue alongside her daughter Rocki, marking the baby’s first public appearance in a custom Dior Haute Couture look designed by Jonathan Anderson.
That feature brought together a cross section of major names in music and fashion to reflect on Rihanna’s broader cultural footprint, with her longtime partner and the father of her three children, A$AP Rocky, among those weighing in on her influence. Between a growing family, a fashion house partnership with LVMH and now a three category sweep at one of beauty’s most recognized award shows, Rihanna’s 2026 has reinforced a reputation she’s spent nearly a decade building brand by brand.
