Photo: Hayu / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Five years ago, Kylie Jenner was the youngest person Forbes had ever called a self-made billionaire. Today, at 27, she no longer holds that title, and her estimated net worth has settled at $670 million. But the cosmetics mogul’s business empire and real estate ambitions tell a more complicated story than a single number can capture.
Jenner, the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner family, first became a household name through E!’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” which ran from 2007 to 2021. The family moved to Hulu in 2022 with “The Kardashians.” But reality TV stopped being Jenner’s primary income stream long ago. She built Kylie Cosmetics into a brand that generated more than $300 million in revenue, sold a majority stake for $600 million and still holds a 44 percent ownership share. She is the second wealthiest sibling in her family, behind only Kim Kardashian.
How the billionaire title was won and lost
Forbes declared Jenner the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in March 2019. The distinction was controversial from the start. Critics pointed out that growing up in one of the most famous families on the planet, with access to massive social media audiences and a built-in marketing machine, complicated the “self-made” label. Jenner herself seemed to acknowledge as much, telling The New York Times in 2019, “I can’t say I’ve done it by myself.”
Then, in May 2020, Forbes revoked the title entirely. The magazine alleged that Jenner’s business was “smaller and less profitable” than previously reported, and that her family had gone to “unusual lengths” to present her as wealthier than she was. Forbes recalculated her net worth to just under $900 million at the time.
Jenner pushed back on X, writing, “I’ve never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. period.” She was later placed at No. 1 on Forbes’ list of The World’s Highest-Paid Celebrities and was the youngest person featured. She currently ranks 52nd on the Forbes list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women 2024, with an estimated net worth of $670 million.
A new generation of young billionaires has arrived
The landscape of young wealth has shifted dramatically since Jenner’s 2019 coronation. Forbes now counts a record 35 people under 30 on its World’s Billionaires list. The youngest self-made billionaires are Surya Midha, Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath, cofounders of AI recruiting startup Mercor, each 22 years old and worth $2.2 billion. The youngest self-made woman billionaire is Luana Lopes Lara, 29, a former ballerina and MIT graduate who cofounded prediction market firm Kalshi. The youngest billionaire overall is Amelie Voigt Trejes, a 20-year-old Brazilian heir.
A record 12 of the 35 under-30 billionaires are self-made, and many built their fortunes in AI. All eight Americans on the list are self-made. The group’s combined wealth totals $92.4 billion.
From lip kits to a $670 million portfolio
Jenner’s business story began with her lips. In a May 2015 episode of KUWTK, she admitted to getting lip filler, a revelation that generated enormous publicity. She seized the moment, launching Kylie Lip Kit at age 18. She founded the business with her mother, Kris Jenner, in partnership with Seed Beauty, funding the initial run of 15,000 lip kits with her modeling earnings. The kits cost $250,000 to produce and sold out almost immediately.
The company was renamed Kylie Cosmetics in 2016, and production scaled to 500,000 kits. By 2017, Jenner made her debut on a Forbes list with a net worth of $41 million, the youngest person featured at the time. She expanded the brand through partnerships with Topshop and Ulta, and released collaboration collections with her sisters and her mother.
In January 2019, Jenner sold 51 percent of Kylie Cosmetics to publicly traded Coty, Inc. for $600 million. She pocketed $540 million pretax from the deal and retained a 44 percent stake. She still leads the brand’s creative development. In February 2025, her Cosmic 2.0 fragrance earned Kylie Cosmetics $3.1 million in media impact value in a single week, according to WWD.
The road was not entirely smooth. Early customers complained about product quality, color mismatches and poor customer service in what became known as the Lip Kit Controversy. Jenner issued a public apology and implemented stricter quality control measures. In 2017, she also faced backlash for appearing in a widely criticized Pepsi ad that was accused of trivializing protest movements related to racial injustice. Pepsi pulled the ad and Jenner apologized.
A Hidden Hills mansion five years in the making
Jenner’s ambitions extend well beyond cosmetics. Hello Magazine reported that she has spent the last five years overseeing construction on a massive new home in Hidden Hills, California, built on a five-acre plot she bought from Miley Cyrus in 2020 for $15 million. The home will have 15 bedrooms, a sports court, an outdoor swimming pool, three guest houses, a 12-car garage and an underground bunker. The estate sits in a rural section of Hidden Hills and includes a vineyard.
The Sun reports that the finished home will be at least twice the size of Kim Kardashian’s $60 million mansion in the same neighborhood. No completion date has been announced.
Jenner’s primary residence is a $36 million compound in Holmby Hills with seven bedrooms, which she purchased in April 2020. She also owns another home in Hidden Hills and an estate in Palm Springs, where she is neighbors with her sisters Kourtney and Kim and her mother. She paid $3.25 million for the Palm Springs property, which has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, an infinity pool and guest suites. Her total real estate holdings were valued at $80 million in 2025, according to Architectural Digest.
The gap between perception and reality
Jenner’s story captures a tension at the heart of modern celebrity wealth. She built a cosmetics brand from a single product line into a company worth hundreds of millions. She also benefited from a level of fame and family infrastructure that few entrepreneurs can access. Forbes gave her the billionaire title, then took it away. A GoFundMe campaign created by Instagram personality Josh Ostrovsky once tried to crowdfund the remaining $100 million to push her over the billion-dollar mark. It raised $268.
At 27, Jenner is a mother of two, the owner of multiple businesses spanning cosmetics, skincare, fashion and beverages, and one of the most followed people on Instagram with more than 393 million followers. She is not a billionaire. She is not broke. And she is still building, literally, on a five-acre lot in Hidden Hills with no finish line in sight.
