From Barney & Friends to a $2 billion beauty brand

Selena Marie Gomez was born in Grand Prairie, Texas, in 1992, to a mother who was only 16 years old. Money was tight. Gomez has recalled the two of them searching for quarters to buy gasoline for the car, and her mother later said they often walked to a nearby dollar store to buy spaghetti for dinner. She was named after the Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla, spent most of her childhood being homeschooled, and earned her diploma in May 2010.

Work came early. From 2002 to 2004 she appeared on the children's series Barney & Friends, and she became a teen idol as Alex Russo, the lead of the Disney Channel sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place. In 2008 she signed with Hollywood Records and formed Selena Gomez & the Scene, a band that released three albums: Kiss & Tell, A Year Without Rain and When the Sun Goes Down.

The solo career followed. Stars Dance arrived in 2013 with “Come & Get It”, and Revival in 2015 brought “Good for You” and “Same Old Love” into the top five of the US Billboard Hot 100. Rare, from 2020, produced the American number-one single “Lose You to Love Me”. She later made the Spanish-language EP Revelación and, in 2025, the album I Said I Love You First with her husband Benny Blanco. Along the way came collaborations such as “We Don't Talk Anymore”, “It Ain't Me”, “Wolves”, “Taki Taki” and “Calm Down”.

Music is only one strand. She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador who speaks up for mental health, and her company Rare Beauty has been valued at $2 billion. She once said she was terrified of what she might have become had she stayed in Texas, and the distance between that remark and a career this wide is the real story.