Sabrina Carpenter has quickly made a name for herself. Whether for her hit songs "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," her impromptu freestyle outros at concerts, or her very public relationship with Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan (the two recently called it quits), she's made it impossible not to know her name. And while it seems like the petite blonde just made an appearance out of thin air, she actually gained industry attention years ago with her breakout role in the Disney Channel original series Girl Meets World.
Below we break down Sabrina Carpenter's noteworthy career that led to her multimillion-dollar net worth.
As far as celebrities who made some serious cash in under a year, Carpenter did very well for herself in the past year. While there's no doubt the "Please Please Please" singer had a good chunk of change before she became a popular singer, her bank account undoubtedly grew after her music career took off. In fact, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Carpenter currently has an estimated net worth of $12 million (though that figure is not confirmed).
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Before she was a chart-topping singer, most people were introduced to Carpenter as an actress. She started out as most actors do with small parts in television series like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Orange Is the New Black.
It wasn't until 2014, when she was just 15 years old, that she landed her breakout role as Maya Hart on Disney Channel's Girl Meets World. On the show, she played Riley Matthews's (Cory and Topanga Matthews's daughter) best friend. The show ran from 2014 to 2017 before ending.
In a 2020 interview with Teen Vogue, Carpenter reflected on her experience on the show, stating, “It’s funny because, in the moment, that was my world and that was my everything, and I was so proud to be a part of it and everything that it stood for. I definitely would have done some things different had I been doing it now. But I think the beauty of the show was that we really were at the age that we were playing and we were coming into ourselves as we were playing characters that were coming into themselves.”
While her role as Maya might be her most remembered, her acting career didn't end in 2017. After the show finished, Carpenter acted as the voice behind Melissa Chase in Disney's Milo Murphy's Law, played a part in Amandla Stenberg’s The Hate U Give, and played the lead role in Netflix’s dance comedy Work It where she plays a student who lies about being on her high school’s renowned dance team to get into college.
While the film was a light-hearted rom-com, the plot couldn't have been further from Carpenter's real life growing up in Pennsylvania where she was actually dancing upward of six days a week.
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“I grew up wishing that I was in them and wishing that Channing Tatum was dipping me,” she told Teen Vogue. “Dirty Dancing's a classic, obviously. Honey. Center Stage. The Step Up movies are probably my favorite if I had to choose, especially Moose from Step Up 2, my heart belongs to him.”
In 2020, Carpenter made her Broadway debut in Mean Girls the musical, where she played Cady Heron.
“I’m so excited,” Carpenter told People in a 2020 interview. “I’m such a big fan of the musical, the movie, the story in general, [creator] Tina Fey, and all these incredible people involved with the show. … I can’t wait for the rollercoaster!
“You only get these opportunities so many times in life,” she added. “You get so lucky when you get to create something new that’s never been done before, and you fall in love with it as you’re making it. But coming into this already knowing that I’m such a fan? And saying every one of those iconic lines? I can’t put it into words; it’s just going to be so thrilling. It brings a whole new energy into it for me.”
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After her Broadway career came to an end, Carpenter began to focus more on her own music. In 2021, she joined Island Records and released her breakthrough album Emails I Can’t Send just one year later. Over the next two years, her music career continued to grow with her 2021 song "Skin" earning her a spot on the Hot 100. In 2023, Carpenter opened for a portion of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which gained her an entirely new fan base.
In 2024, Carpenter released her sixth studio album Short n' Sweet, which most people agree put her on the map. The pop album contained two of her most well-known singles, "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," both of which preceded the album's release. "Espresso" landed Carpenter in the top 10 on the Billboard charts while "Please Please Please" landed her the No. 1 spot.
"Please Please Please" had more attention than many of her other singles, partly due to the fact that in the music video her then-boyfriend Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan plays her criminal boyfriend who keeps landing in jail for his illicit activities.
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In an interview with CBS, Carpenter explains why she cast Keoghan in the video. “I, genuinely—like, a not-even-biased opinion—I was like, ‘Who’s the greatest actor that I can find for this music video?' And he was next to me, in a chair,” she says. “And he was so excited about it."
While "Taste" was also on Carpenters Short n' Sweet album, it didn't get the same attention as "Espresso" and "Please Please Please." That was until Carpenter released a music video with Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega which had the Hollywood rumor mills running absolutely rampant.
The video is rumored to be based on the 1992 black comedy Death Becomes Her where Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn play enemies who fight over a man and end up becoming friends. People claim the song is likely about Carpenter's love triangle with Shawn Mendes and ex Camila Cabello, but Carpenter has neither confirmed nor denied it.
