Harry Edward Styles was born on 1 February 1994 in Redditch, Worcestershire, England, and grew up in the village of Holmes Chapel, Cheshire. His mother, Anne, ran a local pub, and his father, Desmond “Des” Styles, worked in finance; he has an older sister, Gemma. As a teenager he sang in a school band called White Eskimo before auditioning as a solo contestant on the seventh series of The X Factor UK in 2010, where judges placed him into a group with four other boys rather than let him compete alone, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia.

That group became One Direction, formed in July 2010 and signed to Simon Cowell’s Syco Records in January 2011. The band’s run through the early 2010s was extraordinary by any commercial measure: One Direction remains the only act in Billboard 200 history to see its first four studio albums all debut at number one, and by March 2015 the group had sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide, per Wikipedia’s sourced chart history. Styles wrote and co-wrote a growing share of the band’s material as the years went on, an apprenticeship that shaped the songwriting voice he later carried into his solo work.

One Direction went on indefinite hiatus in 2016, and Styles released his self-titled debut solo album in May 2017, led by the single “Sign of the Times,” which reached number one in the UK. His second album, Fine Line, followed in December 2019 and produced “Watermelon Sugar,” his first US number one, but the true commercial breakthrough came with 2022’s Harry’s House and its lead single “As It Was,” which spent fifteen weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, making Styles the only solo male artist in the chart’s history to hold the top spot that long and the longest-reigning British act ever at number one, overtaking Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,” according to Billboard.

Harry’s House won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album and, more significantly, the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 2023 ceremony, beating albums from Adele, Beyoncé, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, as reported by GRAMMY.com and Billboard. It was his third Grammy overall, following an earlier win for Best Pop Solo Performance for “Watermelon Sugar.” Styles has also collected six Brit Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, two Ivor Novello Awards and three American Music Awards across his solo career.

Styles’s cultural profile extends well beyond record sales and trophies. In December 2020 he became the first man to appear solo on the cover of American Vogue in the magazine’s 128-year history, photographed by Tyler Mitchell in a custom periwinkle-blue Gucci gown, a moment widely credited with reshaping mainstream conversations about menswear and gender presentation, per CNN. He was subsequently named GQ’s Most Stylish Man of the Year, and pieces from his wardrobe, including a JW Anderson cardigan and the blue Gucci dress, have been acquired for display by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

Styles has generally favoured a small number of deep, personally curated partnerships over a broad rotation of paid sponsorships. His most prominent tie-up is with Gucci, an ongoing relationship with creative director Alessandro Michele that produced the “HA HA HA” capsule collection in 2022, unveiled at Milan Men’s Fashion Week and named for the sign-off the two friends had long used in text messages, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. He has also fronted campaigns for the fragrance and fashion side of Gucci more broadly, but has been notably selective compared with peers, preferring collaborations tied closely to his own brand and creative relationships rather than generic celebrity endorsement contracts.

Styles’s income now runs well beyond music. His Love On Tour run in support of Harry’s House and Fine Line grossed 617.3 million dollars across 169 shows and sold more than five million tickets, making it the fifth-highest-grossing tour in Billboard Boxscore’s history, according to Billboard. He also owns and releases his music through Erskine Records, a label he co-founded, and holds a minority investment stake in the menswear label S.S. Daley. In November 2021 he launched Pleasing, a gender-neutral beauty and lifestyle brand he owns outright through the holding company Pleased As Holdings Limited; the brand generated 12.2 million dollars in revenue in 2023 and has grown into an enterprise reportedly worth more than 16 million dollars, per financial filings cited by Femfounded.

Styles owns a cluster of properties in Hampstead, north London, that he has steadily assembled since buying his first house there in 2012 at the age of eighteen. He is now consolidating several of these adjoining homes into a single estate in a construction project reported to be worth around 30 million pounds, featuring four bedrooms, a gym, a cinema and an art gallery, with completion expected around 2027, according to Daily Times. He additionally owns a loft apartment in Tribeca, New York, and his wider property portfolio has been valued at roughly 30 million dollars by Robb Report, which also notes he previously sold a Beverly Hills home that was later bought by fellow musician Lizzo.