Iman Net Worth 2025: From Somali Refugee to $200M Empire

The photographer Peter Beard spotted her on the streets of Nairobi in 1975, but the story he would tell wasn’t true. He claimed he discovered a “tribeswoman” who had never seen a camera. In reality, Iman was a political science student at the University of Nairobi, the daughter of a Somali diplomat and a gynecologist. She spoke five languages. Yet she played along with the myth because she understood something most 20-year-olds don’t: the narrative is the product.

That instinct would carry her from African runways to Manhattan penthouses, from Versace campaigns to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire portfolio companies. Today, Iman’s net worth stands at approximately $200 million, making her one of the wealthiest supermodels in history. However, almost none of it came from walking runways.

The Before: Mogadishu to Nairobi

Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1955. Her father served as a diplomat, which meant a childhood of displacement and reinvention. When political instability threatened, the family fled to Kenya. By her teens, she had already learned the refugee’s essential skill: adapting to new environments without losing yourself.

The Diplomat’s Daughter

Unlike most models of her era, Iman arrived in the industry with an education. She was studying at the University of Nairobi when Beard convinced her to pose for photographs. The money he offered, reportedly $8,000 for that first shoot, exceeded what her family might earn in years. Still, she negotiated.

“He wanted to pay me less because I was African,” she later recalled. Instead of accepting the initial offer, she demanded equal compensation to what American models received. This wasn’t youthful arrogance. It was the beginning of a pattern that would define her career: understanding her worth before the market did.

The Gatekeepers: Breaking the Color Barrier

Wilhelmina Cooper signed Iman in 1976, making her one of the few Black models on a major agency’s roster. The timing seemed impossible. American fashion was almost exclusively white, with Beverly Johnson’s 1974 Vogue cover still considered revolutionary. Most agencies wouldn’t even see Black models for castings.

The Exotic Myth Strategy

Rather than fight the industry’s racism directly, Iman weaponized it. She allowed magazines to position her as “exotic” and “otherworldly” because those labels opened doors that “Black American model” would have kept closed. The strategy was cynical and brilliant. Within months, she was booking Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, and Calvin Klein.

However, she never forgot the compromise. “I was acceptable because I wasn’t African American,” she told The Cut decades later. “I was the ‘exotic’ one, which made white people comfortable.” That awareness would later fuel her cosmetics empire.

The Transformation: Runway to Real Estate

Through the late 1970s and 1980s, Iman dominated high fashion in ways few Black models had before. She walked for Halston, Gianni Versace, and Thierry Mugler. Magazine covers accumulated: Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle. By any measure, she had achieved supermodel status.

The Problem With Beauty

Yet she was already planning her exit. “Modeling has a shelf life,” she observed in interviews. “I watched girls peak at 25 and disappear by 30.” Unlike her contemporaries, she treated modeling income as startup capital, not lifestyle funding. While other models bought sports cars, Iman bought real estate.

She also noticed something the beauty industry had missed entirely. Walking into department stores, she couldn’t find foundation that matched her skin tone. Neither could millions of other women of color. The industry considered this acceptable. Iman considered it a business opportunity.

The Empire Pivot: Iman Cosmetics

In 1994, Iman launched Iman Cosmetics, becoming one of the first supermodels to build a beauty brand rather than simply endorse one. The distinction matters enormously. When Tyra Banks signed a CoverGirl deal, she collected a fee. When Iman created her own line, she collected equity.

The Diversity Arbitrage

Her timing proved prescient. Iman Cosmetics offered foundation shades for women of color a full two decades before Fenty Beauty made inclusivity fashionable. While major brands dismissed the demographic as too small to matter, Iman captured it entirely. The company grew steadily through Walgreens, CVS, and Target, eventually generating over $25 million in annual revenue.

“I didn’t wait for permission,” she explained. “I saw a market that wasn’t being served and I served it.” This approach, identifying underserved demographics and building for them, would later become the standard playbook for beauty disruptors. Iman simply got there first.

The Business Philosophy

Unlike many celebrity brands that license their names for royalties, Iman maintained operational control. She hired chemists, approved formulations, and made distribution decisions. The company functioned as an actual business rather than a vanity project. When larger conglomerates came knocking with acquisition offers, she evaluated them on terms, not flattery.

The Bowie Factor: Love and Legacy

In 1990, Iman met David Bowie at a dinner party. They married in 1992 and remained together until his death in 2016. The relationship added complexity to her public image, shifting her from “supermodel” to “Bowie’s wife” in many headlines. She navigated this carefully, maintaining her own identity while embracing the partnership.

Bowie’s estate, valued at approximately $100 million at his death, added substantially to Iman’s wealth. However, attributing her fortune primarily to marriage misses the point. She had already built significant wealth independently. The marriage enhanced her financial position but didn’t create it.

The Hamptons Connection

Iman and Bowie purchased property in Essex County, New York, preferring upstate seclusion to East End visibility. Yet her influence on Hamptons culture runs deep regardless. She pioneered the model-to-mogul template that Cindy Crawford and others would follow. Her cosmetics company proved that supermodels could build legitimate businesses, not just collect endorsement checks.

The Quiet Influence

For Social Life readers who summer on the East End, Iman represents something specific: the transformation of beauty into business. She demonstrated that fame could be converted into equity if you were strategic about it. Today’s legacy-building models, from Heidi Klum to Rihanna, follow pathways she cleared.

Iman Net Worth 2025: The Final Accounting

At 69, Iman’s wealth derives from multiple streams. Iman Cosmetics continues generating revenue, though she has reduced her operational involvement. Real estate holdings span multiple properties. Investment portfolios, managed conservatively, compound quietly. The Bowie estate provides ongoing income from his extensive catalog.

Her estimated $200 million net worth makes her the wealthiest model of her generation who built primarily through business rather than marriage or inheritance. The distinction matters. She converted runway fame into enterprise value before anyone had written the playbook.

Beard’s original myth, the “tribeswoman” discovered in the wild, contained an accidental truth. Iman was never just a face. She was a strategist who understood that beauty fades but equity compounds. The girl who negotiated her first shoot fee in Nairobi became the woman who built an empire from a gap in the market. That transformation required no mythmaking. It just required seeing clearly what others overlooked.

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Iman Net Worth 2025: From Somali Refugee to $200 Million Empire