Why Kylie Jenner Is The Highest-Paid Woman On The Celebrity 100

Kylie Jenner is one of only 15 women on this year's Celebrity 100.2018 Kevin Mazur/MG18

Move over, Beyoncé. This year’s highest-paid female celebrity isn’t known for her hits but is “famous for being famous.”

Kylie Jenner earned $166.5 million in the last 12 months, before taxes and management fees, thanks to her namesake beauty brand, Kylie Cosmetics. The 20-year-old reality television star turned makeup mogul is the highest-paid woman on this year’s Celebrity 100 list of top-earning entertainers, beating out Beyoncé (No. 36, $60 million), who held that title last year. Jenner ranks third overall on the Celebrity 100, behind Floyd Mayweather ($285 million) and George Clooney ($239 million), both of whom started their careers before Jenner was even born.

“I struggled for a minute with finding something to do on my own,” Jenner told Forbes. Now the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan is richer than any of her entrepreneurial siblings with a net worth of $900 million. She’s joined on the Celebrity 100 list by her sister Kim Kardashian West ($67 million) as well as her momager Kris Jenner ($37.5 million), who collects a 10% management fee from her children.

Full List: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities

The Celebrity 100 has more Kardashian-Jenners than ever before, but there are only 15 women among the ranks of the world’s highest-paid celebrities, a drop from last year’s 16. The list is 85% of men—who earned a combined $5.3 billion to the women’s $1.05 billion.

This imbalance reflects the gender pay gap that is hardly limited to Hollywood. In 2017, American women earned 82 cents to every dollar a man made.

Jenner is followed by daytime television personality Judy Sheindlin, who earned $147 million by selling the rights to her Judge Judy reruns for an estimated $100 million. At last year’s Forbes Women’s Summit, Sheindlin credited her shrewd negotiating skills to navigating a male-dominated world; the 75-year-old was the only female in her law school class of 126 at American University. “I went to law school when women were about as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party,” she said. “It toughens you up.”

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Highest-Paid Female Celebrities 2018

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Fellow host Ellen DeGeneres (No. 15; $87.5 million) made history this year as the first woman to receive $20 million for a Netflix stand-up special. This padded her eight-figure paycheck from her eponymous show as well as her producer salaries for Little Big Shots and other shows.

For the past five years, the world’s highest-paid female celebrities hailed from the music industry. Madonna won the top spot on the annual Celebrity 100 in 2013 with a $125 million one-year haul, and Beyoncé took over the following year with $115 million. The next singers to top the ranks were Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, each with nine-figure paychecks.

Popstars still comprise the majority of women on the ranking, with seven singers including Rihanna (No. 86, $37.5 million) and Pink (No.45, $52 million), who returns to the Celebrity 100 for the first time since 2010. Beyonce dropped from No. 2 to No. 36 this year with $60 million in earnings, but her earnings will rise in 2019 due to her On The Run II tour with her husband Jay-Z. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Jennifer Lopez also made the cut, but the list is dominated by 30 male music acts.

Watch On Forbes: Kylie Jenner: From Lip Kits To A $900 Million Fortune In Just 3 Years

It isn’t any better for women on screen. After a three-year hiatus from the Celebrity 100, Scarlett Johansson (No. 77, $40.5 million) makes the list thanks to her lucrative role as the Black Widow in the $2 billion blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. She is the only female movie star on the ranking; last year, there were none. Though Johansson earns big from the Marvel franchise, the preponderance of male-dominated superhero movies and action flicks means fewer roles for women with big backend profits. In 2017, only 24% of protagonists in the 100 highest-grossing films were women, a drop of 5% the previous year, according to a report by Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.

Forbes has tallied the earnings of the world’s highest-paid celebrities for 20 years. Hopefully it won’t take another two decades for the list to reach gender parity.

Maybe another Jenner generation will make it on the list. Says the makeup entrepreneur, of her infant daughter: "Maybe one day [I'll] pass this on to Stormi, if she's into it.”

Methodology: The Forbes Celebrity 100 ranks front-of-the-camera stars around the globe using their pretax earnings from June 1, 2017 through June 1, 2018, before deducting fees for managers, lawyers and agents. Forbes figures are based on numbers from Nielsen, Pollstar, IMDB, SoundScan, NPD BookScan and ComScore, as well as interviews with industry experts and many of the stars themselves.

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