JAY-Z's MarcyPen nears deal for LVMH's 50% stake in Fenty Beauty
The agreement could be signed within three to four weeks, ending a sale process LVMH began nearly a year ago.
MarcyPen Capital Partners, the investment firm co-founded by JAY-Z, is reportedly close to buying LVMH's 50 percent stake in Fenty Beauty. Puck first reported the talks. A source close to the transaction said the agreement could be signed within three to four weeks, with financial terms still undisclosed.
Rihanna owns the remaining half of the brand, which puts her on the other side of a relationship that stretches back years. The singer launched Fenty Beauty in 2017 through Kendo Brands, LVMH's beauty incubator, and the luxury group has held its stake since that debut.
Should MarcyPen take over LVMH's shares, the singer and the firm would split ownership evenly at fifty percent each. That marks the first major change to Fenty Beauty's ownership structure since its launch nearly a decade ago, and it would end a sale process LVMH set in motion almost a year back.
Valuation remains the open question. XXL reports the brand was once valued at more than $2 billion, while more recent estimates have placed it nearer to $1 billion, so the reported range has roughly halved. Neither number has been confirmed in connection with this deal, and the final price rests on terms not yet public.
The track record behind the deal
MarcyPen was formed in 2024 when JAY-Z's Marcy Venture Partners merged with Pendulum Opportunities, the investment vehicle run by D'Rita and Robbie Robinson. Its links to Rihanna predate that merger by several years, reaching back into funding rounds for the singer's lingerie label, Savage X Fenty.
Marcy Venture Partners took part in those rounds in both 2019 and 2022, so the firm already backs one of Rihanna's businesses. Adding Fenty Beauty would deepen an existing financial relationship rather than start a new one, and it gives the deal a familiarity that outside investors would lack.
Jay Brown tightens those ties further. Besides his role at Roc Nation, Brown is a co-founder of MarcyPen, and XXL credits him as a co-founder of both Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. That places him on both sides of the table as the transaction takes shape.
Neither MarcyPen nor Brown responded to requests for comment from Puck, so the reported timeline is the only guide. If it holds, MarcyPen and Rihanna could formalise their fifty-fifty partnership in Fenty Beauty by late October 2026.
What Fenty Beauty has meant to LVMH
Fenty Beauty's debut range of forty foundation shades turned it into one of the most successful celebrity-backed beauty launches in the industry. It made shade inclusivity a baseline expectation across cosmetics, a standard rivals scrambled to match in the years after its arrival.
LVMH itself was born in 1987 from the merger of Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy, and it stands today as the world's leading luxury goods conglomerate. Fenty came into that portfolio through Kendo Brands, which gave the launch a distribution and product-development backbone from day one.
A move away from LVMH would leave Rihanna and MarcyPen as the only owners and remove the group from the brand's operations. LVMH's houses pair creative autonomy with rigid financial control from Paris, a discipline that has produced operating margins above 25 percent in its fashion division.
The sale also fits a pattern of LVMH reshaping its holdings. We covered the Arnault family's €1.63 billion Dior buyback to simplify control of the group, and we reported L'Oréal and LVMH moving closer on a stake in Armani Group, deals that each reordered the structure around core houses.
Our profile of Bernard Arnault traced his playbook of buying prestige brands and holding them, and Fenty was an unusual entry: a celebrity-founded cosmetics line built on inclusivity rather than a heritage maison in need of rescue. Exiting now closes a chapter that never quite fit that template.
Beauty demand and the ownership map
Beauty demand has held firm elsewhere. We covered Ulta Beauty raising its forecasts as prestige beauty held up, and LVMH has lately drawn a Balenciaga executive into its beauty command structure, a sign the group still treats the category as important even as it steps back from Fenty.
For the ownership map, the change is plain. Our complete map of luxury conglomerates tracks which groups dominate categories, and an even split between a celebrity founder and an investment firm would take Fenty out of the conglomerate tier and into independent beauty ownership.
Until a signing, the price LVMH accepts is the figure that will decide whether this exit reads as a retreat or a deliberate handover of a brand it helped build. Neither side has said what that price is, or how it compares with the earlier valuations.
Support the content you love — it’s free 🎉
Add Worthbury as a preferred source on Google. Our stories will be more likely to appear in Google’s Top Stories. It’s free and supports our team. Thank you!
Add as preferred sourceYou can remove us any time in Google’s source preferences.
Thank you — you’re all set 🎉
Worthbury is now one of your preferred sources, so our briefings are more likely to appear in Google’s Top Stories.
This briefing is published daily using an AI-powered system crafted by Worthbury's team and finely tuned to meet our editorial standards. While we continuously test and review the output, mistakes can sometimes happen. Tell us if you spot one.