Rihanna’s dad, Ronald Fenty, is dead at the age of 70. Fenty died in Los Angeles after a brief illness, Starcom Network News reported. Although his cause of death has not been released publicly, family members have flown to California to be with Rihanna and to remember him.
Rihanna, who is now pregnant with her third child, with A$AP Rocky, has not released a public statement, and her spokespeople kindly declined to comment. The loss is during what should be a happy time in her life, and it hangs over the next few months like a pall.
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For fans who have tracked Rihanna’s personal life every bit as closely as her music career, the name Ronald Fenty is somewhat familiar not just by the fact of biology but by the complex and frequently public nature of their relationship.
In a no-holds-barred interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2012, Rihanna discussed the emotional trauma and psychological effects of her early years. “I was so mad at him,” she said. “I was just mad about a lot of things going on in my childhood, and I couldn’t separate him as a husband from him as a father.” She was candid about growing up in a home filled with dysfunction but stated unequivocally that Fenty was the “best father in the world” despite the hurt. Their connection, she explained, was “layered.”
Fenty’s relationship with his daughter was inconsistent over the years. After divorcing Rihanna’s mother, Monica Braithwaite, in 2002, Fenty’s substance abuse problems drove an even bigger wedge between them. This rift grew even deeper in 2019 when Rihanna sued her father, accusing him of trying to get rich at her expense by creating Fenty Entertainment and attempting to book a “$15 million tour” for themselves without her permission. It ultimately settled out of court in 2021.)
The thread of family connection persisted even amid the public legal fight and previous acrimony. When the COVID-19 crisis took off, Rihanna discreetly sent her father a ventilator and checked up on him all the time — according to Fenty, who couldn’t say enough good things about his daughter: “She is very special, very smart, very caring, very kind,” he told me.
Now, with his death, the complicated story of Ronald Fenty comes to a muted coda. It is a chapter marked by friction and forgiveness, hurt and healing. And although Rihanna does not speak of it yet, perhaps she will, in her own time, someday share the memories and the significance of their passage. Until that time, the singer faces this most profound of personal tragedies in private, with only the wishes of fans and well-wishers across the globe.
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