Fenty Beauty has done what few brands would dare: it retired the foundation that built its name and started over. On September 4, Rihanna’s brand released the Pro Filt’r Fluid Flex Natural Matte Longwear Foundation in 50 all-new shades with an all-new numbering system, while the original Pro Filt’r Soft Matte formula that launched the brand in 2017 is on its way out. The new foundation, priced at $48, was roughly three years and more than 30 prototypes in the making.

The rebuild answers years of customer feedback. According to Roshini Greenwald, Fenty’s GM and SVP of North America, shoppers said the original formula felt heavy, ran warm on a lot of skin tones, and made neutral undertones hard to find — and that it had become a special-occasion foundation rather than an everyday one. The new range keeps 50 shades but reorganizes them around undertone, using letter codes for cool, warm and neutral, with more neutrals overall. Fenty is clear that the number was never the point: depth tells you how light or deep a complexion is, but undertone is where foundation matching usually goes wrong.

When Fenty Beauty arrived in 2017 with 40 foundation shades, it reset the industry’s standard for inclusion, covering the lightest and darkest ends of the spectrum at a time when half that range was considered generous. Nine years on, the brand says the next era of inclusivity is personalization. Alongside the launch, Fenty introduced the “Unfilt’rd Inbox” on its website, where shoppers can submit feedback on shades — including where the range is still missing the mark — with the goal that enough flags on a gap could lead Fenty to create the shade customers identified. Virtual shade matching is also rolling out online and on TikTok.

Rihanna remains hands-on: she approves every product and had been wearing Fluid Flex herself for a year before it launched. The formula was tested across markets spanning North America and Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. As the brand approaches its 10th anniversary, the message is unmistakable — even a hero product is not sacred when the community asks for better.

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