Self-made women Beyoncé and Taylor Swift continue to break their own records and write “The Manuscript” for success.
Lights, camera, and smile,” Taylor Swift sings on one track off her new double album, The Tortured Poet’s Department. She certainly has plenty to smile about, as does fellow pop star Beyoncé. This past year has been phenomenal for both superstars, with hugely popular tours, super successful movies based on those tours and new albums to boot. Those factors lifted their net worths and raised their ranks on Forbes’ recently released list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women.
The two women have a long friendship, supporting each other’s successes over the years. In 2021, Beyoncé sent Swift a bouquet to celebrate her win of Album Of The Year for Folklore at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. Most recently, each of them attended the premieres for the films of their record-breaking tours.
Swift is now worth an estimated $1.3 billion–up from $1.1 billion in October and $740 million on the 2023 Self-Made Women list. The boost last fall came as a result of the first leg of her Eras Tour, which added an estimated $300 million to her fortune. The $200 million jump in her fortune since October came thanks to the increased value of her catalog–now worth an estimated $600 million–plus royalties earned from all the play her songs get, in addition to an estimated $55 million in her earnings from the film version of The Eras Tour, which was released in mid-October. Swift now ranks No. 24 on the 100-person strong Self-Made Women list, up from No. 34 a year ago.
The chanteuse continues to dazzle crowds with all new costumes and choreography on her Eras Tour as it moves through Europe, with new music from the double album The Tortured Poets Department, released in April. The 31-track album broke multiple records, including ones she’d previously set: It reached 1 billion streams within five days of its release and claimed the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100–prompting a celebratory billboard in Times Square.
Beyoncé, meanwhile, wrapped up her five-month, 17-country Renaissance World Tour last October with an estimated $100 million in earnings for her. In December she released the film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, which documented the creation and execution of The Renaissance World Tour; it pulled in nearly $44 million at the box office. Then in March she released her first country album, Cowboy Carter, which incorporated and sampled musical powerhouses both past and present, including Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. Cowboy Carter received over 300 million streams in its first full week of release and broke Spotify’s record (which Swift then broke the following month). Together these milestones helped boost her fortune by $220 million since last year to an estimated $760 million, and moved her up three notches from a year ago on the Self-Made list to No. 45.
Queen B still has more in store. In February, she launched her own high-end (and pricey) hair care line, Cécred; it’s too soon to have made a difference in her fortune but we’ll revisit it next year. And she will share the silver screen with daughter Blue Ivy in Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel set to hit theaters in late December.
Read on to see how these two dynamic women on America’s Richest Self-Made Women list stack up.
