Chinese Actress Zhao Lusi Builds Multimillion-Dollar Empire with Beauty Debut

While many young Chinese screen stars compete for drama scripts and brand sponsorships, Gen Z actress Zhao Lusi is turning her personal brand into a formidable commercial enterprise.

At her Macau concert, a purple leopard-print sampling kiosk stood out near the venue entrance. The setup marked the official debut of Rose Amigo, Zhao’s newly launched cosmetics brand. Within hours, thousands of fans posted product reviews on Xiaohongshu, China's Instagram-like lifestyle platform, urging the brand to launch its full product line.

At the same time, her lifestyle brand Rosydoedian—named after her two dogs, Doe and Diandian, and commonly known as RDD—has been making waves across major retail centers in China. Pop-up activations and newly opened brick-and-mortar stores in top shopping destinations like Nanjing Deji Plaza, Beijing Hopson Commercial Center, and Shanghai's Julu Road drew crowds of fans who traveled across provinces to queue outside.

On Alibaba’s Tmall platform, RDD’s flagship store has accumulated over 460,000 followers and generates more than 200,000 annual orders. Despite premium price points for lifestyle accessories—such as hair ties for 64 RMB ($9 USD), portable water bottles for over 200 RMB ($28 USD), and phone cases priced over 100 RMB ($14 USD)—key SKUs consistently show sales in the thousands, with several hot items selling out completely. On social e-commerce platforms, a signature dog-themed phone grip alone has surpassed 50,000 units sold.

According to third-party e-commerce tracking data, RDD’s monthly cross-channel sales now exceed 10 million RMB ($1.4 million USD)—a scale comparable to mature digital-native consumer brands in China.

Beyond hit television dramas and corporate endorsements, Zhao is quietly constructing a self-sustaining commercial empire. Moving from relying on entertainment capital to accumulating her own brand equity, she is demonstrating a modern model for celebrity-led beauty and consumer ventures.

From Top Gen Z Actress to Brand Founder

Corporate registry records reveal that Zhao, born in 1998, holds absolute controlling interest over her brand ventures, moving far beyond typical celebrity license deals.

Celebrity brands are hardly novel, but Zhao’s execution—driven by rapid market momentum and the simultaneous rollout of a second venture in beauty—stands out in the domestic consumer sector. The biggest differentiator lies in her strategic motivation.

Most celebrities launch products during the peak of their careers as a low-risk side business. If the venture fails, their core entertainment career acts as a safety net. In those arrangements, the brand remains a secondary satellite business, tied strictly to short-term popularity and managed by external brand operators.

For Zhao, building her own brand was not an afterthought at the peak of her fame, but a strategic move forged during a challenging career pivot. Following a publicized agency contract dispute in mid-2025, Zhao restructured her career, launching her independent studio Yiersansi and partnering with Whale Entertainment, an entity under Alibaba Group. Corporate restructuring cleared potential contract liabilities, providing her with greater creative and operational freedom.

Around the same time, her Rosydoedian online store went live, scaling into a mature retail business within six months.

Trademark records show that trademark applications for Rosydoedian date back to mid-2024 under Beijing Zhao Dezhu Culture Technology, where Zhao and her father initially held a combined 100% stake before later restructuring equity ownership. The business setup demonstrates that Zhao takes direct financial accountability and operational control rather than merely licensing her image.

Zhao’s on-screen career continues to yield strong market returns. After rising to stardom in The Romance of Tiger and Rose, she solidified her box-office appeal with hit dramas such as Love Like the Galaxy, Hidden Love, and Love's Ambition, which gained international traction on Netflix. Her concert in Thailand drew nearly 12,000 attendees, proving her cross-border fan reach.

This high profile has translated into major commercial partnerships. In 2026 alone, Zhao secured nearly 20 endorsement deals, spanning luxury and beauty names such as BVLGARI, Chow Tai Fook, Pechoin, and TOP TOY. Endorsement deals generate steady cash flow, while her personal brands build long-term enterprise value. High-tier brand endorsements elevate her personal positioning, while her lifestyle and beauty lines strengthen consumer engagement.

From Pet Products to AI Glasses: Breaking Category Boundaries

Before debuting Rose Amigo in cosmetics, Zhao’s team proved they could convert emotional community engagement into repeatable retail sales and higher average order values.

RDD started with premium pet accessories—a fragmented market with passionate consumers and no single dominant luxury player. Using her pets as design motifs, RDD priced phone grips at 50 RMB ($7 USD), phone cases over 100 RMB ($14 USD), and hair clips at 150 RMB ($21 USD), alongside high-end pet apparel that sold out rapidly.

"Pricing is tied closely to minimum order quantities (MOQs)," Zhao explained during a fan livestream. "If I order 100,000 water cups, unit costs drop significantly. But I need to be confident I can sell all 100,000 units without tying up capital needed for future production orders." She encouraged fans to make purchasing decisions based on genuine product delight rather than obligation.

Consumers are buying into an aesthetic lifestyle co-created with the star. RDD products feature bright, dopamine-inspired color palettes and distinctive visual branding that match Zhao’s personal social media style.

Industry observers note that Zhao has achieved what many celebrity brands fail to do: systematically transforming celebrity affinity and personal aesthetic into a scalable consumer ecosystem.

This platform model allows RDD to stretch into adjacent lifestyle categories, including wearable technology. In May 2026, during her concert in Thailand, Zhao wore smart AI glasses developed in collaboration with fashion tech brand Phancy. Weighing just 37 grams, the hardware stripped away cameras and displays to focus on high-frequency features like Bluetooth calls, audio playback, real-time translation, and voice assistant capabilities, designed specifically as a female fashion accessory.

While most smart glasses focus on male tech enthusiasts, RDD positioned the hardware as a stylish accessory, bypassing direct specification competition with hardware giants like Rokid and RayNeo.

Following Fan Bingbing's Footsteps into Beauty

While hardware and smart wearables present supply chain complexities, the cosmetics category offers stable product margins and relies heavily on traffic efficiency—making beauty a natural progression for Zhao's brand network.

Trademark records reveal that Rose Amigo operates under Chengdu Maning Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., in which Zhao holds a 90% stake and her father serves as legal representative, confirming direct ownership rather than an IP license model.

Zhao Lusi’s entry into cosmetics comes during a broader period of market adjustment across China’s beauty sector. Data from the 618 shopping festival showed skincare sales contracting for the first time, reflecting a broader slowdown where even international brands face a persistent slump in China. At the same time, e-commerce platforms have tightened compliance oversight, automatically filtering out unregistered or non-compliant formulas.

In a tightened market environment, traditional traffic-heavy brands face high customer acquisition costs. Zhao, however, brings near-zero-cost organic customer acquisition and an established fan base willing to pay a premium.

At her Macau concert debut, Rose Amigo launched without traditional paid advertising, relying on sampling kiosks to ignite organic social media discussions. While conventional beauty launches require sustained customer acquisition spending in public traffic channels, Rose Amigo activated high-converting private-domain interest directly through a live event.

Rose Amigo chose face and neck sheet masks as its premier launch category—a strategic market entry point. Neck care grew counter-trend in 2025, yet the category remains highly fragmented with no dominant leader. Compared to the hyper-competitive facial sheet mask market, face-and-neck care offers a clear opportunity for a strong personal brand to capture market share.

Celebrity-founded beauty brands are becoming a major force in the market. A prominent precedent is Fan Bingbing’s Fan Beauty Diary, which launched in 2019 with sea grape hydrating sheet masks. The brand achieved over 1.8 billion RMB ($250 million USD) in annual GMV last year and ranked among top beauty brands on Tmall during major shopping festivals.

However, a key operational difference exists between the two business models. Fan Bingbing reduced her acting commitments, allowing Fan Beauty Diary to evolve into an independent entity with recurring organic purchases. Zhao, by contrast, maintains an active acting schedule and over 75 million combined followers across Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese sister app) and Xiaohongshu. While her visibility drives immediate sales volume, it also tightly links brand equity to personal public standing, making supply chain quality control and brand management critical.

As celebrity entrepreneurs move from simple endorsements to controlling enterprise equity—seen in recent ventures by pop stars like Huang Zitao and Hua Chenyu—the focus shifts from short-term fan conversion to long-term operational sustainability. For Zhao Lusi, navigating supply chain scalability and multi-category expansion will determine whether her brand portfolio evolves into a lasting beauty and lifestyle enterprise.