The Rhode to a Billion: Hailey Bieber and the Rise of the Attention Economy
The Rhode to a Billion: Hailey Bieber and the Rise of the Attention Economy
Style - November 22, 2025
Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand Rhode was acquired by e.l.f. for $1B — a move that reveals how powerful the attention-driven celebrity economy has become.
Hailey Bieber didn’t luck her way into a billion-dollar outcome. The internet loves the shortcut mythology — marry Justin, launch a moisturizer, become rich. But her rise didn’t ride on proximity. It rode on architecture. Hailey didn’t stumble into the attention economy. She learned how to shape it.
Her story starts in the early Instagram era, when the app still pretended to be about sunsets and avocado toast. Hailey Baldwin was recognizable, but recognition isn’t influence. Influence is built, curated, and reinforced — and she was doing all three years before Rhode ever appeared.
She moved inside a friend group that accidentally became the blueprint for an entire aesthetic generation. Kendall, Gigi, Bella, Jaden, Willow — the kids who defined the mood boards of the 2010s. Hailey wasn’t the loudest in the room. She was the most consistent. Minimal makeup. Dewy skin. Slick hair. A clean, polished, almost reflective simplicity. Long before TikTok named it the “clean girl aesthetic,” Hailey embodied it.
She built an aesthetic before she built a product.
Modeling came next — runways, campaigns, editorials — and then media. Vogue beauty routines. Behind-the-scenes content. Candid YouTube moments that offered intimacy without surrendering privacy. She created a digital presence with just enough distance to feel aspirational and just enough closeness to feel real.
When she married Justin Bieber in 2018, she didn’t gain influence. She amplified the influence she had already engineered. The marriage wasn’t the foundation. It was the megaphone.
So when Rhode launched in 2022, the brand didn’t feel like a debut. It felt like a reveal — the physical form of everything she’d been broadcasting for a decade. Tight product line. Monochrome packaging. Intentional restraint. A beauty brand built the way architects design museums: clean lines, nothing extra.
“My philosophy is one great moisturizer, one great serum, one great lip product,” she said. Rhode wasn’t trying to overwhelm. It was trying to clarify.
Hailey also made it clear she wasn’t a face on the box. She was inside the lab, inside the formulas, inside the decisions. “I’m so product-obsessed,” she said. “I test everything on my husband, on my friends, on my team.” Rhode wasn’t celebrity gloss. It was founder energy.
Then came the part nobody could have predicted: Rhode didn’t need virality. Its fans manufactured it on their own. They filmed Rhode like it was merch. They defended Rhode in comments like it was family. Pop-ups looked like album-release lines. Hailey put it perfectly: “I don’t look at Rhode as just a beauty brand. I look at it as a world.”
That was the unlock — Rhode wasn’t skincare. It was identity architecture.
And it existed in a different economic universe than the one her family came from. The Baldwin generation built fame through film and television — massive exposure, minimal ownership. Their attention dissolved back into the system. Hailey built in an economy where attention compounds. Where every follower can be a customer. Where aesthetic becomes product and product becomes capital.
Her strategy was simple: build the aesthetic, build the trust, build the brand, then build the equity.
In May 2025, e.l.f. acquired Rhode for $1 billion — $600M cash, $200M stock, $200M in earn-outs. Hailey stayed on as Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation. She knew instantly it was the right deal. “I walked away like, ‘They’re it,’” she said. And she’d been clear from day one: “I would never sell unless it was a billion dollars.”
After signing the deal, she said she felt “invigorated, excited, and more ready than ever.” Then she added the line that defined her new chapter: “I want to preserve this for my son’s future.”
Here’s the twist most people missed:
Hailey Bieber may have out-earned her entire Hollywood family combined.
Not because she was more famous.
Because she mastered the economy they never had access to.
The Baldwins built careers.
Hailey built a system — and Rhode was the proof of concept.
In the modern celebrity economy, attention isn’t fame.
It’s capital.
And Hailey just converted it into a billion dollars.
