Jeffree Star: Scandalous YouTuber, singer and successful businessman

Jeffree Star – YouTube Legend. Rock star. Businessman. Apparently, there’s hardly anything the flashy icon of the modern era can do. However, the road to his 18 million followers was not an easy one. Here, we at FIV Magazine have summarized his career for you, as well as his most glaring controversies. Because one thing’s for sure: Jeffree Star is certainly no slouch. And he was never a child of sadness.

Jeffree Star: A story of glitter, drugs and rock’n’roll

The icon of the beauty community saw the light of day in 1985 in Los Angeles as Jeffree Lynn Steininger Jr. After the suicide of his father, it was mainly his mother Marra Shubyann Lindstrom Steininger who raised him. Already in his school days Jeffree Star had a lot of fun with make-up and earned his money as a musician, model and also if necessary as an unknown make-up artist for the greats of Hollywood. He met them on weekends in the hippest clubs of the city, which he visited regularly despite his young age and thanks to a fake ID.

When you take a closer look at his career, you wouldn’t expect the flashy Jeffree Star to be a make-up mogul one day. In the beginning, working with brushes and powder was simply a sideline. His real dream? To become a musician. So in 2009, Star released his first and, to date, only studio album. Although he was signed to the Konvict Muzik label shortly after, he left a few years later.

In November 2014, the former musician and now famous YouTuber officially became a businessman: The company Jeffree Star Cosmetics was born. He is currently one of the highest paid YouTubers of all time and recently earned a whopping 18 million dollars, according to Forbes – and that’s just through YouTube.

  • 1985: Jeffree Star is born in Los Angeles
  • 2006: Launch of the YouTube Channel
  • 2009: Release of his first album
  • 2010: Contract with Konvtict Muzik
  • 2014: Launch of Jeffree Star Cosmetics

How the beauty icon lives today, you can see here in the video:

Quick Facts: Crass net worth

  • Name: Jeffree Star
  • Born: 15 November 1985
  • Active since: 15.02.2006
  • Subscribers: 18.1 million
  • Total views: 2.16 billion
  • Net worth: $75 million dollars

Biggest controversies: jealousy and online bullying

Jeffree Star has been involved in the YouTube world’s most blatant scandals from the very beginning. From racism to drug use to online bullying, he has left nothing out.

Kat von D: Two giants of American pop culture clash

For years, tattoo goddess Kat Von D and Jeffree Star made the Hollywood Hills unsafe together. But suddenly they had a ruthless split: in 2016, Von D unexpectedly posted a photo of Star with a big ‘no’ on his face and declared on Instagram that she no longer wanted any contact with him due to his drug use, racism and bullying. Of course, Star didn’t let this stand and accused Von D of envying the success on his successful make up collection. After a long back and forth, the feud remains unsettled to this day, and both Star and Von D have not commented on it since.

Nikkita Dragun, Laura Lee And Manny MUA: An Old Feud Escalates

Much like his friendship with Kat Von D, other relationships crumbled over the course of his career. For example, early in his career, Jeffree was part of a group of up-and-coming newcomers to the YouTube sphere: Laura Lee, Manny MUA, Nikkita Dragon, and Gabriel Zamora. In 2017, Star posted a series of tweets about an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, describing Beauty YouTuber Laura Lee’s personality as ‘vicious’. The friendship went on the rocks and the entire clique distanced themselves from Star.

Rumors of failed investments and business friendships began to swirl. Although Jeffree Star was always portrayed as the culprit by the YouTube community, there were never any official statements. The feud was almost forgotten when YouTube legend Shane Dawson released a documentary series about Jeffree Star’s life.

A few days later, Star’s former friend Zamora posted a photo with Laura Lee, Manny MUA and Nikkita Dragun with the caption:

“Bitch is bitter because without him we’re doing better”

But the many new fans that Jeffree Star had gained thanks to the sympathetic documentary series quickly came to his support: In order to take revenge, they published old, racist tweets from the past of Dragons, Lees, Mannys and Zamoras. The latter publicly apologized for their racist statements at the time and are still dealing with some of the fallout from the scandal today.

Star has also been criticized in the past for racist statements, for which he apologizes in the following video from 2018: