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Selena Gomez launched Rare Beauty with a mission to prioritize mental health advocacy alongside its beauty products
The Rare Impact Fund has raised over $30 million to support youth mental health initiatives across five continents
Gomez’s openness about her mental health journey has helped foster connection and awareness among her global audience, earning her PEOPLE’s Beauty Impact Award
When Selena Gomez launched Rare Beauty in 2020, she wasn’t simply creating another celebrity beauty brand. From the beginning, she wanted the company to stand for something bigger.
That mission has only grown in the years since, with mental health advocacy and fundraising becoming as central to Rare Beauty’s identity as its best-selling makeup. Now, PEOPLE is honoring Gomez, 34, with its inaugural Beauty Impact Award for the barrier-breaking work she has built into the brand and the community surrounding it.
“If there’s one thing that I’m most proud of, it’s our message and what we stand for as a brand,” Gomez says on the set of her L.A. cover shoot where she accepted the award from PEOPLE’s GM and Editor-in-Chief Charlotte Triggs. “So this means a lot.”
The accolade recognizes beauty industry leaders who use their platforms to create meaningful change beyond the products they sell. And Gomez’s impact is particularly personal: She has spent years speaking openly about her own mental health journey and living with bipolar disorder, helping make conversations that can often feel difficult or isolating feel more accessible.
Selena Gomez receives the 2026 Beauty Impact Award from PEOPLE GM and Editor-in-Chief Charlotte Triggs at her cover shoot.
Credit: Leeor Wild
Despite her superstar status and level of fame, Gomez has maintained a remarkable sense of vulnerability. That openness has long been part of the connection she shares with her hundreds of millions of fans, and it became a cornerstone of Rare Beauty’s purpose.
At the heart of that effort is the Rare Impact Fund, which Gomez launched alongside Rare Beauty with a $100 million fundraising pledge over 10 years. The company also committed 1% of product sales to the fund. To date, it has raised more than $30 million to support youth mental health organizations and initiatives, provided mental health training to more than 200,000 educators and supported 30 nonprofits. The fund reaches an estimated 3.5 million young people annually, with its support extending across five continents to organizations including The Trevor Project, Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services and Child Mind Institute.
Selena Gomez receives PEOPLE’s 2026 Beauty Impact Award.
Credit: Leeor Wild
Elyse Cohen, Rare Beauty’s Chief Impact Officer and the President of the Rare Impact Fund, tells PEOPLE that while the idea began with Gomez’s own experience, it quickly became about something much bigger than her personal diagnosis.
“It all started with a conversation with Selena and her personal experience, but less around her diagnosis and more around the process,” says Cohen. “She felt that if someone like her with access to the best care struggled to understand what was going on and to feel support, that there must be many young people with the same challenges. This is something that’s been part of Selena’s dream and the legacy she wants to build for a long time.”
That realization helped shape the Rare Impact Fund’s focus on some of the biggest gaps in youth mental health care, including suicide prevention and crisis response, networks of support and school-based solutions.
Selena Gomez attends Rare Beauty’s 4th annual Mental Health Summit at on May 01, 2025, in L.A.
Credit: Stefanie Keenan/Getty
The fund’s reach is inextricably tied to Gomez herself and her unusual ability to make an enormous audience feel like a personal community.
“It’s incredible. I think she has such a way of feeling so accessible and relatable for one of the most famous people in the world,” Cohen says. “Maybe that’s because she’s so vulnerable too. I don’t know. Just from being around her, it’s really incredible.”
Cohen, who previously spent years working for former First Lady Michelle Obama, sees a similar quality in the way both women connect with people.
“Both of them are people at the end of the day,” she says. “If Selena’s in a meet and greet, what she cares about is the person’s story so much more than what she’s wearing,” Cohen shares. “That’s how she connects. I think people see that and it’s what allows her to resonate across ages and demographics.”
Selena Gomez and Elyse Cohen, President, Rare Impact Fund attend the Third Annual Rare Impact Fund Benefit on Oct, 29, 2025 in L.A.
Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty
And, Cohen adds, Gomez’s ability to truly listen may be her greatest strength.
“There’s young people who grew up with her. There’s parents who feel like their children have felt connected to her. And I think it’s just her ability to connect with anyone from any background and really listen to them, and she remembers those stories. That’s when Selena comes to life, when she’s connecting with young people and listening to their stories. And I think that’s her special secret sauce.”
Selena Gomez on set of her 2026 PEOPLE Cover Shoot.
Credit: Leeor Wild
Gomez has spent years using her own experiences to help others feel less alone, but she is also clear-eyed about the limits of advice when someone is in the middle of a mental health struggle.
“The honest truth is when you’re stuck in a mental health cycle, you can’t hear advice,” she tells PEOPLE. “What I would say to people is to hold on, and to know that it’s okay to not be perfect. It’s okay to feel all the feelings, and I don’t want people to think that’s forever, that today is the end all, be all. It’s not. We have tomorrow.”
The multihyphenate also credits her personal relationships with family and close friendships for getting her through some of the hardest times.
“I have had people in my life that have unconditionally loved me and even when they were not understanding exactly what I was feeling—I felt seen and I felt really loved,” she says. “So they were confused, but once I got my diagnosis, I felt free and they understood and it made sense. So just sticking it out with someone, being next to them in their hardest moment means more than a thing you could do.”
Selena Gomez on set of her 2026 PEOPLE cover shoot.
Credit: Leeor Wild
The mogul doesn’t describe mental health as something she has conquered. Instead, she sees it as an ongoing process of learning about herself and developing the tools that help her stay grounded.
“I still am discovering certain parts of my brain, and my attitude towards mental health is constantly growing. I think it’s important to grow with it and understand the logic behind it, even when you’re in an episode,” she shares. “I’ve been able to be grounded and rooted in my [dialectical behavior therapy] work and working with my therapists. Also, creating coping skills yourself is really important. I don’t think it’s even worth talking about what my past looked like, and that’s the best feeling. That’s when you know you’ve done some really good work and you’re taking care of yourself.”
That sense of evolution extends to the Rare Impact Fund, too. As the organization has grown, so has its understanding of what the nonprofits it supports need to succeed.
Elyse Cohen and Selena Gomez attend the Second Annual Rare Impact Fund Benefit Supporting Youth Mental Health on October 24, 2024, in L.A.
Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty
For Cohen, the future of the Rare Impact Fund isn’t simply about raising more money. It’s about helping the organizations on the ground become stronger and more sustainable.
“I’d love to see that there are more players in the space like us that are coming together around this issue,” she says. “I’d love to see that we’ve continued to invest in these organizations in bigger and bigger ways. And I don’t just mean by checks, I mean by what are their needs? Do they need marketing support? Do they need fundraising support? Can we help connect them to more funders?”
Ultimately, Cohen says, success would mean creating a stronger network of organizations — and bringing more people into the effort.
“Success to me means that we are supporting their capacity in so many different ways and that also we’ve helped to catalyze additional funding to the space,” she says. “That to me is also success, is that people understand what we’re doing and they sort of continue to join that effort.”
Selena Gomez on set of her 2026 PEOPLE Cover Shoot.
Credit: Leeor Wild
The work continues this fall. The Rare Impact Fund has announced that its fourth annual benefit will take place Oct. 14 in Los Angeles, with actor and comedian Sean Hayes set to emcee. Last year’s fundraiser raised $2 million for the fund’s mental health initiatives.
Six years after Rare Beauty’s launch, its impact has expanded far beyond the beauty aisle. But for Gomez, the measure of that impact remains refreshingly simple.
“Even if we were helping 10 people, it’s the best feeling in the world,” says Gomez.
Read the original article on People
