The 30-year-old Barbadian beauty was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty. Her middle name is Arabic and means “sweet basil.” With her family and close friends, she still goes by Robyn. “I get kind of numb to hearing Rihanna, Rihanna, Rihanna,” she has told Rolling Stone. “When I hear Robyn, I pay attention.”
Celebrating Rihanna: Photos and lesser known facts about the dynamic singer
Before making her on-screen debut as a Navy weapons expert in Peter Berg’s Battleship, Rihanna was an army cadet in a sub-military program in her native Barbados.
Rihanna is one of the best-selling artists of all time with 230 million records sold worldwide. Rihanna is the youngest and fastest solo artist to earn fourteen number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as a current total of 31 top ten singles on the same charts.
At 15, Rihanna won her high school beauty pageant and was named Miss Combermere after performing Mariah Carey’s “Hero.”
Rihanna has a few unorthodox preshow rituals. Things start off normal she told Vogue: “I eat lozenges, steam my voice, do my makeup. I Skype my vocal coach, and we sit there at the makeup table and do warm-ups for about a half hour,” she told Esquire in 2011. Then she starts to have some fun: “My personal assistant-slash-bartender brings me a shot that she dilutes with a little something so it’s not so harsh, like orange juice or soda water and lime,” she said.“I have to have it. I take it very seriously, so there is a level of anxiety, always. I overthink everything when it comes to my job. The drink calms my nerves. I sip it while I watch the opening act from my dressing room. Sometimes I go out into the audience. I put on a really big hoodie and sneak out there.”
In 2007, Gillette insured Rihanna’s legs for $1 million. “They named me this year’s Celebrity Legs of a Goddess, so along with the title comes an insurance for your legs of a million dollars,” she has told the Guardian.
While growing up, Rihanna says she was a tomboy. Maybe that was because her other siblings are boys. Besides, her childhood had probably made her tough because of some family problems that they had back then and she had already witnessed it at a young age of 14. That’s why she started working early - selling some clothes in the street.
Rihanna has two siblings - both boys -Rorrey and Rajad Fenty
Rihanna was scheduled to perform at the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009 but canceled. Her then-boyfriend Chris Brown had physically assaulted her and a shocking police shot of her bruised and bloody face quickly circulated. Brown was arrested and charged with assault. In an interview with Diane Sawyer nine months later, she said: “This happened to me… It can happen to anyone.”
Rihanna’s childhood was deeply impacted by her father’s addiction to crack cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana. Her parents faced multiple marriage problems and eventually ended when Rihanna was 14.
Rihanna’s also an actress! The singer made a cameo role in Bring It On: All Or Nothing as well as roles in Bates Motel, This is the End, Annie, Home and the upcoming all-female reboot of Ocean’s Eight.
Rihanna launched her Believe Foundation in 2006 to help terminally ill children. In a 2008 interview, Rihanna said: “When I was young and I would watch television and I would see all the children suffering, I always said when I grow up I want to help.”
Rihanna has once said that she witnessed an exorcism as a child, which is the reason why she is terrified of going to any haunted places, particularly Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.
In 2012, Rihanna was named the 20th most influential person in Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People in the World.” Rihanna’s also got seven wax figures at different Madam Tussauds Museums around the world.
Rihanna loves tattoos and she has several of them! Some of them include a music note on her ankle, a star on her left ear, a trail of stars going down her back neck and an Egyptian falcon shaped in a gun on her right foot.