Celebrity Brands Take Half of Beauty's Top Creator Marketing Ranks

Five celebrity-founded companies occupied half of the top 10 spots in beauty's creator marketing rankings for 2025, according to Traackr's Creator Advantage 2026 report. Kylie Jenner's Kylie Cosmetics landed at No. 2, Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty at No. 3, Hailey Bieber's Rhode at No. 4, Ariana Grande's R.E.M. Beauty at No. 5 and Huda Kattan's Huda Beauty at No. 6.

The rankings signal a structural shift in consumer marketing. Shoppers increasingly discover products through creators and social media rather than traditional advertising, and celebrities function as built-in customer-acquisition engines for the brands they found.

That reach converts into measurable enterprise value. E.l.f. Beauty agreed to acquire Rhode in a deal worth up to $1 billion in 2025. Rare Beauty is estimated to be worth about $2.7 billion.

But fame alone does not build a durable business. Gwen Stefani's GXVE Beauty shut down in early 2026. Drew Barrymore's Flower Beauty ceased operations in September 2025. Both had high-profile founders. The contrast suggests audience reach creates initial demand, while long-term success still depends on product quality, brand positioning and consumer loyalty.

Beauty outperforms every other category

Traackr measures creator marketing performance through its VIT framework, which scores creator volume, frequency, content performance and average audience size. Beauty posted the highest VIT score of any industry analyzed, with top brands averaging 687,000.

Creator volume in beauty climbed 66% year over year to 22,100 creators. Frequency rose 6%. The other metrics tell a more complicated story: average audience size fell 30%, and content performance slipped 1%. Effectiveness now depends on creator quality rather than quantity.

The category itself gives creator marketing room to work. Skincare and cosmetics are highly visual and lend themselves to tutorials, reviews and before-and-after demonstrations. Short-form video lets consumers assess results quickly, which makes TikTok and Instagram powerful discovery channels.

That discovery increasingly ends in a purchase. According to NielsenIQ, TikTok Shop is now the fourth-largest health and beauty e-commerce retailer in the U.S., with health and beauty sales topping $4.4 billion. Other categories — fashion, personal care, food and beverage, and spirits — did not generate comparable creator marketing performance, even where celebrity-founded brands appeared among top performers.

Platform choice decides reach

TikTok was the only major platform in Traackr's analysis to deliver consistent year-over-year growth across all VIT sectors. The platform prioritizes content discovery over follower counts, so creators and brands can reach large audiences regardless of account size.

Instagram moved in the opposite direction. Creator participation rose while engagement and views declined. The data suggests that pumping out more content no longer guarantees stronger performance.

For brands, the lesson is that authenticity and relevance often outperform scale. A smaller group of engaged creators can generate stronger results than a larger network of loosely aligned influencers.

Trust separates winners from shutdowns

Marketing drives awareness. Trust determines whether consumers come back. Celebrity founders start with an advantage because they have spent years building relationships with audiences through entertainment, social media and public visibility, and that familiarity makes consumers more willing to try products tied to a well-known figure.

"Not all creators will be able to launch their own brands," Ashley Villa, founder of talent agency Rare Global, told Forbes. "The ones that move the needle are those who are evolved in their thinking and are involved in every step of the process from sourcing to marketing and not just promotional."

Consumers may buy once because of a founder's influence. Sustained success requires products that justify the attention. In an increasingly crowded beauty market, the top performers win by turning attention into trust, and trust into repeat customers.