“I can remember about seven times when our car got stuck on the highway because we ran out of money for gas,” Gomez said. Elle in 2012, in which she talks about her childhood in poverty with her then teenage mother Mandy Teefey.

“My mother gave up everything for me and had three jobs,” Gomez said in a 2017 interview with Entertainment.

Teefey, then 16, gave birth to Gomez in 1992 in a “really rough neighborhood” of Grand Prairie, Texas. Five years later, she divorced her then-husband and raised Selena as a single mother while struggling to make it as a stage actress.

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As fate would have it, Gomez discovered her passion for acting after spending some time at her mother’s theater, which later made her a star.

Teefey described her daughter’s early fascination with acting to the New York Times 2017: “She went with me to one of my rehearsals and sat there motionless the whole time. On the way home she was quiet and then said, ‘You know, Mom, it might be more fun if you did it like this.’ And I thought, ‘Oh no. She’s going to be an actress.'”

And that’s exactly what she did.

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At just 10 years old, Selena made her acting debut in Barney and friends, Five years later, she rose to fame with her leading role in Disney’s Emmy-winning series Wizards of Waverly Placewhich earned her a total of around $3 million, according to Cosmopolitan. She then switched to music as lead singer of a pop band Selena Gomez and the scene before she started a successful solo career with her hit album Stars dancewhich ranked first.

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Today, Gomez has an impressive resume: three studio albums, nine top 10 pop hits, 44 singles (half of them platinum or gold) and two Grammy nominations.

Interestingly, acting and singing do not make up the majority of Gomez’s wealth.

Accordingly BloombergMusic tours accounted for less than 5% of Gomez’s wealth, and album and record sales accounted for less than 2% – unlike her close friend Taylor Swift, who achieved billionaire status in October 2023 primarily through her music and concerts.

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“I really tried my best to create products that weren’t just about putting my name on them,” she said 102.7 KIISFM in a radio interview in 2023.

Of course, it helped that I have the third most followed Instagram account in the world.

With 424 million followers on the platform, just behind soccer stars Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Gomez supported her brand’s marketing efforts by posting clips of herself doing her makeup with Rare Beauty products. With 14 product categories and 150 items at launch, the brand quickly built a loyal following – particularly for its viral liquid blush. In 2023, Rare Beauty generated total sales of $350 million, $70 million of which came from its blush alone, reports Bloomberg.

Her social media influence has also helped her land multimillion-dollar deals with major brands like Puma and Coach, which earned her $30 million and $10 million, respectively.

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But that is not all. The Come and get it The singer, who is open about her battle with bipolar disorder and depression, founded her own mental health startup called Wondermind with her mother, which was valued at $100 million in 2022.

“She is a versatile businesswoman with multiple income streams that contribute to her impressive net worth,” says Stacy Jones Bloomberg.

But despite their business success Only murders in the building Star (Hulu pays her $6 million per season) is especially proud of her philanthropic mission to expand mental health care and education worldwide. She donates 1% of her cosmetics sales to the Rare Impact Fund, which aims to raise $100 million by 2030.

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On TIME 100 Summit in April, Gomez said, “I think we’ve accomplished something that no one has ever done, at least in cosmetics. That’s what makes me happy every night when I go to sleep.”