For those who don’t know, Amber Rose (or Amber Levonchuck, to give her birth name), is a 36-year-old model, television personality, actress, and influencer. She’s also one very wealthy lady. According to Celebrity Net Worth, the former Mrs. Wiz Khalifa is worth the grand sum of $12 million. A fortune by anyone’s rights, and one that’s on the verge of growing even bigger if her current business interests are anything to go by. So, who exactly is Amber Rose, and how exactly did she get so ludicrously wealthy?
The Early Days
Rose was born in October 1983 in Philadelphia. At the age of 15, her parents divorced. In an effort to support the family financially, she began stripping under the stage name ‘Paris’. According to interviews she’s given since, she also tried her hand are drug dealing, but proved unsuccessful. In 2008, her fortunes took an upward turn when she was cast in the video for Young Jeezy and Kanye West’s “Put On”. Her appearance not only caught West’s eye (the two started dating shortly after), it threw her into the spotlight in a major way. By 2009, she’d put her stripper day’s firmly behind her after winning a contract with the modelling agency, Ford Models. Appearances on the runway at New York Fashion Week soon followed. As Wiki notes, around the same time, she was also making a name for herself as the ‘go to girl’ for rap star’s music videos, appearing in the likes of Nicki Minaj’s “Massive Attack,” Young Jeezy’s “Vacation,” Wiz Khalifa’s “No Sleep,” Fabolous’ “You Be Killin’ Em,” Ludacris’ “What Them Girls Like” and Future’s “Mask Off.”
Fame and Fortune
You can be famous without being rich and you can be rich without being famous. But increasingly, the one feeds into the other. Since achieving celebrity status, Rose has made a vast amount of money simply by virtue of being famous. Like other ‘stars to hire’, she commands huge sums for turning up at private parties and functions and mingling, however briefly, with her fellow guests. According to fotolog.com, clubs or individuals that want Rose to grace them with her presence will need to fork out anything between $50,000 to $250,000 for the privilege.
Influencing Power
Social media isn’t just a place to share your cute cat pics. It’s a place where you can make money. In Rose’s case, make that a fortune. According to blackenterprise.com, Rose, who currently boasts over 18.8 million followers on Instagram, earns more money per post than most of us make over a year. During an interview with host Van Lathan on Red Pill podcast, Rose revealed just how much she makes per year from the social media site. “Probably like $2 million a year, just off Instagram,” she said. “There’s girls that make more than $2 million a year, I make $2 million on Instagram a year.”
The App
We all use emojis, but how many of us could design one? More importantly, how many of us could make millions by doing the same? Rose, for one. In 2016, the model turned businesswoman launched the Amber Rose emoji app. Available from the iTunes store at $1.99 a pop, the app boasts over 900 emojis personally curated by Rose. Despite the somewhat adult content (Apple has issued a warning alongside the app that reads “You must be at least 17 years old to download this app,” and warns off “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor”) the app went down a storm with Rose’s fans on its release…so much so, in fact, it ended up earning her a $4 million payday.
Endorsements
If her modelling work, video appearances, and emoji designing wasn’t enough to keep Rose in champagne and caviar, her long list of endorsement deals certainly will. Since rising to fame, she’s made a fortune by lending her name and face to various products and brands, including Smirnoff, the online retailer Fashion Nova, and weight loss products like BoomBod and Flat Tummy tea.
TV Appearances
Over the past decade or so, Rose has become an almost permanent fixture on our screens, sometimes in an acting capacity but more often than not as herself. Her first appearance came in 2007 when she appeared as Jesse in an episode of The Haunting. Subsequent acting gigs have included guest roles on the likes of Better Off Alone (2008), Gang of Roses II: Next Generation (2012), School Dance (2014), Selfie (2014), Sister Code (2015), Black-ish (2015), and What Happened Last Night (2016). As herself, she’s appeared in Russell Simmons’s reality show, “Running Russell Simmons”, as a guest judge on Season 3 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, as a judge on Season 2 of Master of the Mix, as a contender on the 23rd season of Dancing with the Stars (where she finished in 9th place), as a guest judge on America’s Next Top Model, and as a guest diner on Hell’s Kitchen. In 2016, she even hosted her own (admittedly short lived) chat show, The Amber Rose Show, on VH1.
Her Personal Life
Rose may be talented in her own right, but few would argue that her colorful personal life hasn’t helped keep her in the spotlight – or, indeed, kept the public interested enough to follow her on Instagram and buy up her emoji app. Her first high profile relationship came in 2008, when she and Kanye West began dating shortly after the model appeared in his video for Put On. After their very public relationship fizzled out, Rose moved on to Wiz Kahfia. After a year of dating, the couple announced their engagement in March 2012. They married just a year later on July 8, 2013, almost five months after they welcomed their first child, Sebastian Taylor Thomaz. Unfortunately, the marriage wasn’t too last. On September 2014, Rose filed for divorce from Khalifa, citing irreconcilable differences. In the summer of 2017, Rose, who now shares joint custody of Sebastian with her former spouse, began dating the much younger rapper, 21 Savage. By March 2018, the couple had separated. Just over a year later, Rose announced she was expecting a child with Def Jam record label executive Alexander ‘A.E’ Edwards. Their son, Slash Electric Alexander Edwards, was born in October 2019.
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