Rihanna is a triple threat and a force to be reckoned with. Her resume includes — but is surely not limited to — actress, businesswoman, and singer. Rihanna’s come-up story entails a young girl from Barbados with a big voice and passion for music.
In 2005, RiRi was signed to Def Jam Recordings, when record producer and rapper Jay-Z was CEO and president of Def Jam at the time. Rihanna became the best-selling digital singles artist of all time in 2015, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. On top of all that, Rihanna owns an inclusive beauty brand she launched in September 2017 called Fenty Beauty. She created her brand to fulfill a mission that focuses on embracing inclusivity and diversity in the beauty industry.
The following year, Rihanna launched her lingerie company, Savage x Fenty. Her lingerie line emphasizes beauty from the female gaze, creating a more colorful and inclusive perspective of what it means to feel sexy. The brand not only makes lingerie for women, but also for men and nonbinary folks. After years of male-dominated and male-owned lingerie brands, Rihanna changed the game with her company’s brilliant marketing strategy and foundation of diversity.
With the magnitude of her influence and power, Rihanna has also participated in humanitarian efforts like The Clara Lionel Foundation, which she founded in 2012 to advocate for climate justice in the Caribbean and the United States.
Rihanna has dedicated her professional career to inspiring and empowering young women around the world. She’s constantly breaking boundaries, and unifying communities with a simple tool: empowerment. Here are 12 inspirational quotes about empowerment from Rihanna.
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1. “We can only fix this world together. We can’t do it divided… We can’t let that desensitivity seep in. The, ‘If it is your problem, then it’s not mine — it’s a woman’s problem, it’s a Black people problem, it’s a poor people problem,’ and they want to break bread with you? Well, this is their problem, too.”
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2. “As I stare out into this beautiful room, I see optimism, I see hope, I see the future. I know that each and every one of you has the opportunity to help someone else. All you need to do is help one person, expecting nothing in return. To me, that is a humanitarian.”
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3. “I want women to feel confident no matter what size they are; no matter what shade of nude they are; no matter what their personality is, what their race is, what their religion is. I want women to feel confident and sexy because that’s who we are, and we deserve to feel like that.”
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4. “There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer.”
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5. “I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut — when you really follow the things that feel great to you — you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.”
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6. “To me, sex is power. It’s empowering when you do it because you want to do it.”
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7. “The minute you learn to love yourself, you would not want to be anybody else.”
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8. “I think fashion has been an outlet for me to express myself, to speak up, to say who I am and to be very loud about it at times, and I just like to have fun with it. Fashion is just a world of thrills, it’s exciting, there’s no rules. But rules are meant to be broken.”
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9. “You should be celebrated for every aspect of your growth and your growing pains … You should be celebrated for all the effort that you put into building your future.”
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10. “Doing what you want means moving forward with the way you feel and living your truth.”
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11. “Never a failure, always a lesson.”
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12. “It’s all about honesty. This is not failure, it’s lessons. It’s not the end. If you learn from mistakes, it’s not failure.”