After her break into the music scene in 2005, the world has watched Rihanna grow into one
of the most successful women on the planet. But her rise to success was anything but easy,
this superstar has faced her fair share of hardships. Here is Rihanna's tragic, real-life
story.
Rihanna remembers growing up years in Barbados as being, in her words,
"Just a little island girl riding bikes, running around barefoot, and flying kites in the cemetery."
But her childhood home wasn't as free. Her father's drinking problems would lead to some
extremely tense moments. She told Rolling Stone in 2011,
"Fridays would be scary because he would come home drunk. He'd get paid, and half of it
would go toward alcohol. He'd walk in the door, and it was all eyes on him."
The future pop star could feel the temperature in the house go up whenever domestic violence
was around the corner, previously telling ABC News,
"[My parents] had a very abusive relationship. My dad was the abuser. [He hit her] on numerous
accounts. I don't want to say normal, but it wasn't a surprise when it happened. She
never went to the hospital...Domestic violence is not something that people want anybody
to know."
Though her mother was the primary victim of her father's outbursts, Rihanna recalled one
time in particular when she was punished for wanting to stay at the beach 10 minutes longer.
She told Rolling Stone,
"He slapped me so hard. I ran home with his handprint on me. I couldn't believe it. My
mother saw my face, how traumatized I was. You know how, when you know you did something
wrong, and you deserve to get beat? This was out of nowhere."
Rihanna is a musician first, but she's a powerful business woman, as well. As noted by Rolling
Stone, she's had huge endorsement deals in addition to her own perfumes, cosmetics, and
fashion lines. Her upbringing as the oldest child in the family made her staunchly independent,
and her father helped mold her into the woman she would become. She told Rolling Stone,
"He taught me how to fish, how to swim, how to run, how to ride. He really toughened me
up."
When she was young, Rihanna's father sold clothes on the street or out of his car to
make a living. Whether through want or necessity, she would sometimes join him. In a 2011 interview
with The Sun, her father, Ronald Fenty, said,
"She used to sell stuff on the side of the street like I did. She'd come outside of the
store and put up a rack and sell hats and belts and scarves...She would also buy sweets,
put them in packages and take them to school to sell to her friends for a profit."
It was that entrepreneurial spirit that had Rihanna's father thinking she would end up
in business, and in the end, he was right.
Addiction sadly took a substantial toll on this celeb's early life, when drugs planted
their hooks in Rihanna's father and ran havoc through her family home. On Oprah's Next Chapter,
she tearfully told Oprah Winfrey that her family broke up because of his addiction.
According to the Mirror, her dad Ronald bought drugs even when money and food in the house
were low. Rihanna admitted,
"Even as a toddler, I learned that my mum and dad would argue when there was foil paper
in the ashtray."
When she was nine years old, Rihanna walked in on her dad smoking crack, according to
Rolling Stone. Ronald admitted to The Sun that he did in fact have a drug problem and
that Rihanna had seen him take drugs in their house. He explained,
"She was just a little kid and it made her look at me, and other things, differently.
Around the same time we were walking down the street with the kids and there was a guy
sleeping on the sidewalk. Her mother said to [Rihanna], 'Your dad is going to end up
like that.' I did not want my children to see me sleeping on the sidewalk so I started
making the changes."
Rihanna's father would eventually beat his addiction, but it cost him his marriage and
damaged his relationship with his children. He said,
"I had to give up drugs for my family. I still kind of lost them."
Rihanna is loved and admired around the world, but she didn't always feel loved as a child
in Barbados. Her father was a descendant of a poor Irish community, the members of which
were often referred to with derogatory names. Rihanna's last name, Fenty, was a common surname
for this group of people. The future singer-songwriter also had a light complexion, and this combination
led to teasing at school. In a 2009 interview with Allure, Rihanna explained,
"I was cultured in a very 'black' way. But when I got to school, I'm being called 'white.'...They
would look at me, and they would curse me out. I didn't understand."
The future celeb didn't take it lightly, and she fought back, sometimes with her fists.
She told Glamour,
"I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don't even understand.
It was my skin color. Then when I got older, it was about my breasts."
The constant bullying she faced, however, helped shape her and prepare her for a life
in the limelight, a life that can be cruel and unforgiving. She told Harper's Bazaar
in 2015,
"This thick skin has been developing since my first day at school. It didn't happen after
fame; I couldn't survive fame if I didn't already have it. So sometimes the toughest
thing in life is to be vulnerable."
"I wanted to do everything my way, you know, and it's kind of like a bad girl attitude,
like a little rebellious, I got a little attitude."
With Rihanna's father battling his own demons and the fights at home increasing, the future
celeb's mental health understandably suffered. Though the trouble at home was kept private,
the young Rihanna began to separate herself from the other kids at school. It was around
this time that the future singer's grades slipped along with her health. Rihanna's mother,
Monica, revealed to Rolling Stone,
"She had always been a straight-A student, but she started to struggle. She would suffer
from these terrible headaches. She had to get CT scans."
Rihanna's headaches went on from age eight to fourteen, but the doctors had no answers
for the excruciating migraine-like attacks. Initially, they believed that she may have
a tumor of some sort. However, the test results always came back negative.
It wasn't until her parents separated and the fighting stopped that the headaches finally
went away. Rihanna believes that the pain was caused by the emotional stress of the
arguing and domestic abuse.
In February 2009, the world was rocked by reports that Chris Brown had abused then-girlfriend
Rihanna. TMZ later released photos of her battered face, and the abused singer became
fodder for nearly every news outlet in the U.S., causing Rihanna to retreat from the
public eye for months. She told ABC News,
"When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result in some young girl getting
killed, I could not be easy with that part. I couldn't be held responsible for telling
them, 'Go back.'"
In her isolation, however, she began to worry about Brown, despite her being the victim.
She later explained to ABC News,
"If I feel this depressed, then what is he going through? I had to protect him. I thought
that I had to let him know, don't do anything crazy. Like just hang in there...The whole
world hates him now. His fans, his career. He just, he lost me, I just need to let him
know; don't do anything stupid."
Eventually, the two reunited, and Rihanna faced criticism for it. For her part, she
was disappointed because she'd made a promise to her younger self that she was, quote, "never
going to date somebody like [her] dad," as E! News reported. She wasn't proud of her
choice, but she had been overpowered by love.
"They're entitled to feel angry because it wasn't a good thing that happened."
"But you have forgiven him?"
"I have."
The pair split once again in 2013.
If you or someone you know is struggling with domestic abuse, please call or chat online
with the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Many high-profile celebrities contend with rumors, from exaggerated tales to outright
lies. For Rihanna, it seems that every single celebrity she talks to becomes the target
of a reported relationship. While working on a Rolling Stone cover story, Rihanna happened
to be in the same restaurant as Colin Farrell, someone she'd been rumored to be sending salacious
texts. As Farrell left the restaurant, he stopped by the singer's table, and jokingly
said to her,
"Our friends outside are gonna get some good mileage out of this. We're gonna be texting
each other all f---ing night!"
The actor was right, the next morning, several tabloids suggested the two celebs ate dinner
together and were romantically linked. To make matters worse, rumors have sometimes
come from within. After Rihanna was assaulted by Chris Brown, her father sold information
to the press. Rihanna later told Vogue in 2011,
"That was the first time. My dad went to the press and just told them a bunch of lies.
Because he hadn't talked to me after...that whole thing. He never called to find out how
I was doing, if I was alive, nothing...He went straight to the press and got a check."
That wouldn't be the last time either, as Ronald Fenty would later sell more gossip
on his famous daughter. Rihanna wondered,
"It really makes me question what I have become to my father. Like, what do I even mean to
him?"
After her challenges with Chris Brown, Rihanna found that she was spiralling into a dark
place. She recalled on Oprah's Next Chapter that she was "resentful," "angry," and struggling
to overcome it all. When asked how she finally got through it, Rihanna said,
"[I] repaired my relationship with dad."
The singer had grown apart from her father after her parents' divorce years earlier.
"I couldn't separate him as a husband from him as a father. I felt like if he was a bad
husband, he was a bad father."
After the reconciliation, however, Rihanna and Ronald continued butting heads. In some
cases, it wasn't personal, it was business. According to CNN, Rihanna discovered that
her father and his business partner were allegedly using her name and brand, Fenty, to earn money.
The singer and her representatives repeatedly asked the pair to stop.
When that failed, they filed a lawsuit. According to the 2019 suit, Rihanna's father reportedly
launched a production and talent company called Fenty Entertainment in 2017, and negotiated
15 unauthorized Rihanna shows, all totaling nearly $15.5 million. He even reportedly attempted
to use the Fenty brand to register a line of resort hotels. MSN reports that the case
would be moving to a jury trial in June 2020.
Rihanna was exposed to things in life much earlier than most. By the time the singer-songwriter
was 16 years old, her father had moved out and her mother had returned to work to support
the family. This left the young teenager at home to look after her younger brother. Though
it caused Rihanna to grow up quickly, she looks back at these times fondly, telling
Elle that it was, quote, "probably the best summer [she] ever had."
But it was more than one summer that she would act as caregiver. While Rihanna takes on much
of this willingly, like gifting her mother a massive mansion, some of it has been imposed
upon her. In 2008, she was forced to send her father home from her U.S. tour for drunken
behavior. According to the Daily Mail, in order to save her father from going to jail
for a California arrest, Rihanna agreed to pay $58,000 for him to enter a Malibu rehab
program in 2013. And while speaking with Rolling Stone, Rihanna revealed that her dad once
sent her a text with nothing but prices for furniture that he wanted to buy for his house.
She explained,
"It's fine. I'll give my father anything. It's not something that's hard for me to help
him with. It's just, like, damn, Dad. Hi."
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