overview
Tina Knowles is the mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles. She has a very close relationship with them and her grandchildren. For Beyoncé’s daughters, Blue Ivy and Rumi, she released a memoir of Matriel in April 2025.
She is Beyoncé’s mom, Jay Z’s mother-in-law, and her grandmothers are Blue Ivy, Sir and Rumi, but Tina Knowles has far more to do than her famous family.
“It sounds like horny and cliché, but if everything was taken from me, I promise you, if I still have my family, I would be fine, I told Elle in April 2025.
This is everything you need to know about her.
Beyoncé was named after her.
Knowles was born to Celestine Anne Beyoncé. Her last name is an incorrect birth certificate for her last name Beyincé. The New York Times reported. She was the youngest of seven children, a tailor and father. Her family has a Creole heritage and she grew up in Galveston, Texas.
While Beyoncé was growing up, she owned a salon.
She worked as a makeup artist in Los Angeles before opening a hair salon in Houston called Headliner. Knowles shares an old video of the headliner, including some featuring members of Destiny’s Child. “Hairstyles are more than just the act of hair. It’s how motherly love is transferred through that care,” she wrote in her memoir.
Knowles is the vice-president of Beyoncé’s hair care brand.
Brand Sexred, launched by Beyoncé in 2024, was inspired by her mother’s salon, and Knowles is the company’s vice-chairman. “How many people at Y’all knew that my first job was cleaning my hair at my mom’s salon?” Beyoncé wrote on Instagram. “Destiny’s Child started out by performing for clients while they were getting their hair done. I was exposed to so many different kinds of entrepreneurial women in her salon. I saw firsthand how to nurture and celebrate hair care and celebrate the soul directly.
Knowles has a big presence on Instagram.
She is known for her candidness on social media. On social media, he has over 4 million followers. She posted behind-the-scenes shots of her granddaughter Brutzivy, fashion shows and Beyoncé concerts, as well as well as well as well as frequently literate photos for her fans.
She also hosted a Facebook Watch Talk Show called Talks with Mama Tina, featuring Zendaya, John David Washington and Kelly Rowland as guests.
In the early days of Destiny’s Child, Knowles did all the hairstyles for the group.
Knowles used her beauty experience to style the hair of the former members of the group: Beyoncé, Kelly Roland, Latavia Roberson, Letoya Rackett. In the Patriarch, she recounts memorable moments on the set of the “No, No, No (Part 2)” music video. When Beyoncé asks her mother to give her blonde highlights, Knowles realizes she doesn’t have enough extensions. With her legs in mind, she cut out some of her own highlights to use as an extension for her daughter.
She also made outfits for Destiny’s kids.
Knowles’ mother was a dress maker and she learned about fashion from her. “Sewing and fashion has always been huge in my family. We were really poor, but we were in the best outfits because my mother made our clothes. She shopped well with good intentions to find really good shoes,” she told W in May 2025.
Knowles used his dressmaking skills to create outfits for Destiny’s Child. “Wear the clothes I made for them, people either copy the outfits or look at the runway, they have clothes with similar sleeves.
She took inspiration from Motown Looks for the group’s outfits. “We were both Motown fans, my ex-husband and I. The girls saw Motown tapes, and we got inspiration,” she said in an August 2020 video conversation with the Washington Post.
Music executives pushed back the costumes and said Knowles’ designs would prevent the fateful child from hampering the success that artists Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears had. “The (record label) was meeting my husband and they told him that I was basically a problem and that I was a reason why girls were being restricted with their crossover appeal because the girls were a little too flashy and a bit of Motown.
She started a fashion line with Beyoncé and searched for the red carpet for her daughter.
In 2005, she and Beyoncé launched Deleon’s Line House, named after Knowles’ mother Agnez Deleon. They introduced the line in an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. The affordable line was eventually closed.
Knowles also asked Beyoncé’s red carpet to search for events such as the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards and film premiere. According to the New York Times, she created the white dress Solange wore at the 2017 farewell party for President Obama at the White House.
In 2024, Knowles told people he was diagnosed with breast cancer after missing a mammogram. “And as a woman, we get busy sometimes and we run around so wrapped up and running around, but you have to take your test. She was told she had stage 1 cancer in her left breast and had surgery to remove the cancer. Her ex-husband, Matthew Knowles, received his own breast cancer diagnosis in 2019.
She collects art from black artists.
Knowles has an art collection featuring works by Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kenyatta Achinkle.
She began collecting art when she was 19 years old. “It was really important to me that when my kids grew up, they saw images of African Americans,” she told Vanity Fair. She and her ex-husband Richard Lawson have opened the Wako (where art comes) Theater Center, a 99-seat theater and gallery in Los Angeles that focuses on black art and culture.
Wako holds glass every year. In 2022, there was a Harlem Renaissance theme, with Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Blue Ivy all taking part. In 2019, Beyoncé and Blue Ivy were wearing Lion King costumes.
“My mother has always been invested in making women beautiful,” Beyoncé told the New York Times in 2017.
She is with her grandson.
Knowles is a grandmother of four. Beyoncé’s children, Blue Ivy, Rumi, Sir, and Jules Smith, son of Solange. Blue Ivy often serves as her hairdresser, Knowles posts videos of her granddaughter, helps with her eyebrows, and puts on makeup for the fashion show that Jules was walking around.
She is also on adventures with other grandchildren. She shared a video of Rumi’s appearance on the Cowboy Carter Tour, and praised her musical talent in an interview. Knowles also loves to read books with her grandchildren. She said he was talking about being cheerful and that he had a different interest from his sisters. “Sir is very quiet,” Tina said E! May 2024.
She wanted to be a singer.
When Knowles was in high school, she started an all-girl group called the Vertons, but her mother didn’t consider it a viable career path. “I wanted to be a singer, but this small town was so big, there were no singers. That’s what my mom said. My mom… as much as I loved her, she wanted the best for me.
She works with her daughter.
Knowles made a cameo with Beyoncé’s 2020 Disney+ Visual Film Black. She also appeared on Solange’s 2016 album A Seat at the Table. She talks in the track “Tina taught me.”
She divorced and remarried.
In 2009, she was married to her husband, Matthew Knowles for 33 years. In 2015, she married actor Richard Lawson. Richard Lawson was the father of old friend and actress Bianca Lawson in Newport Beach, California. “There was a time when I doubted whether I would find love again,” she told people. “But I decided I was happy.”
In 2023, Knowles and Lawson divorced. She hinted at the book breakup, saying that she “worthy more” and that she would never “deserve the whole thing, be loved and respected” in her marriage.
She won the award.
In March, Billboard praised her as the first mother at the outlet’s annual women’s music event. In her acceptance speech, she replied, “There are no formal training classes to prepare you for the most important tasks of your life. You get ruined at times. I know what I did. And unfortunately, if you had enough blessings to have a great mother, it’s incredible.
She was also featured at the Glamour 2024 Women of the Year Awards. In 2016, she was awarded the inspiring leadership award at the Essence Festival, becoming the first person to receive the honor.
Related Stories
