Rihanna is the wealthiest female musician in the world and comes from the developing nation of Barbados. With so much money and the background she has, the singer must give to charity.
Rihanna has given to many charities over the years. She has supported HIV/AIDS awareness, underprivileged children, children’s hospitals, and cancer research. She has performed at charity concerts and partnered with companies like MAC Cosmetics for charity campaigns. In 2012, she founded her own nonprofit organization called Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF). She has been essential in providing COVID-19 relief funds.
Scroll down to read more about Rihanna’s donations to charity, the founding of CLF, and her role in COVID-19 relief funding around the world.
Rihanna’s Charitable Donations
With a career spanning over fifteen years, Rihanna has contributed millions of dollars to different charitable organizations. She has also performed at multiple charitable events to help raise money for different causes. At the beginning of her career, she started The Believe Foundation and went on a charitable tour called A Girl’s Night Out to raise money for the charity. The foundation was meant to help underprivileged children.
In 2007, Rihanna was named as a Cartier Love Charity Bracelet Ambassador. The money from sales of the bracelets went to a charity of the celebrities choosing. The same year, Riri also teamed up with a dozen other celebs and H&M to raise money for HIV/AIDS awareness. She also supported an HIV/AIDS cause again in 2014 by partaking in MACs Viva Glam campaign. She was one of the artists that contributed to the song Just Stand Up! to benefit the Just Stand Up for Cancer campaign.
In 2012, Rihanna took part in a charity concert to raise money for Children’s Orthopaedic Center and The Mark Taper-Johnny Mercer Artists Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. That same year she made a $100,000 food bank donation.
Founding the Clara Lionel Foundation
As mentioned above, Rihanna founded the nonprofit Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) in 2012. Since its founding, all of her charity donations have been made through this nonprofit. The foundation is named after her maternal grandparents Clara and Lionel Braithwaite. One of the first things Rihanna did with the foundation was donate $1.75 million to create the Clara Braithwaite Center for Oncology and Nuclear Medicine at Barbados’ Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
On the foundation’s website, they state that CLF “supports groundbreaking and effective education, health and emergency response programs around the world.” Through CLF, Rihanna has partnered with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) in order to advocate the ongoing education crisis. She also created the Clara Lionel Foundation Global Scholarship Program and the Barbados Micro Grants Program.
You can watch the below YouTube video from Clara Lionel Foundation that gives even more details about their work.
Rihanna’s COVID-19 Contributions
On March 22, 2020, Rihanna and CLF donated $5 million towards relief programs for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The foundation released this statement, which highlights “Clara Lionel Foundation has provided $5 million to the following organizations to immediately mobilize a broad response working with on-the-ground partners that include Direct Relief, Feeding America, Partners in Health, The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, the International Rescue Committee, and others.”
Four days later, Riri made a donation of Personal Protective Equipment to the state of New York. Then she made a $700,000 donation to Barbados so the country could buy more ventilators. She didn’t stop here either.
Rihanna then teamed up with Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, to each donate $2.1 million to support domestic abuse victims in LA during the crisis. Rihanna, whose father was an addict, is a domestic abuse survivor.
With her charitable organization Clara Lionel Foundation and over a decade of philanthropy, there is no arguing that Rihanna has a big heart. Charity is clearly one of her highest priorities.