Three years ago, we introduced you to Rihanna’s girl crew as we anxiously waited for what we now know as Anti.
Since then, Rihanna released the best album of 2016 and followed it up by starting her own clothing and shoe lines, lingerie company, charity foundation, and makeup juggernaut.
Here’s a refresher on all of the people who keep Rihanna’s businesses moving — including the tight-knit core group of old friends and business partners who call themselves #TheCorp, and some more peripheral names you might not yet know about.
Can any list of Rihanna’s associates begin without Forde?
As we wrote back in 2015: “Melissa is the most visible member of Rihanna’s lady squad: holding Rihanna’s hand at red carpet premieres, hanging behind the scenes at music video shoots, and snapping intimate portraits as they crisscross the globe.
As the one friend that has been by Rihanna’s side moving from Barbados to America together 14 years ago, Forde and Rihanna have become each other’s family, Melissa a constant and unchanging presence during Rihanna’s dizzying rise to mega-stardom.” She’s also a photographer who has her own hat company, M$$.
Pardo is the Chief Creative Officer of Rihanna’s Fenty Corp, a title she acquired in 2014 when Rihanna incorporated her company. She’s also handled Rihanna’s art direction since 2007, eventually becoming her official creative director around the release of 2011’s Talk That Talk.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Pardo worked in finance before transitioning to the creative world of art directing and producing. She’s overseen much of Rihanna’s video production and tours, and the whole of Fenty Corp — from the new product lines to the Diamond Ball — is under her watch.
Another of Rihanna’s longtime friends and partners, who we’ve described as having “a playful and super-protective demeanor.” When we first rounded up Rihanna’s crew in 2015, Jenn was Rihanna’s personal assistant and day-to-day liaison (she’d also recently gotten married). Now, she’s the official Project Manager at Fenty Corp — and she just had a baby.
Follow us to see more useful information, as well as to give us more motivation to update more useful information for you.