Stevie Nicks Lives An Unbelievably Lavish Life

There's never been anyone in rock music quite like Stevie Nicks, who is truly a rock 'n' roll role model. While she's influenced multiple generations of singers, songwriters, and performers, her unique and almost magical sensibility will likely never be re-created. Struggling as a musician before she became a famous member of Fleetwood Mac, Nicks transformed what was previously a British electric blues band into one of the biggest bands of all time. In doing so, she helped establish the California sound, and showed what can happen when confessional poetry and spooky folk tales combine with pop and rock.

Throughout her time in Fleetwood Mac and into her parallel Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-level solo career, Nicks has always carried herself with a certain panache and charisma, and a part of her magnetism is made possible by wealth. The massive fortune she generated over the past 50 years writing, recording, and performing on her own and with Fleetwood Mac made Nicks a very rich person, who can live life her way and to an almost unimaginably high level. Here's just how wealthy she is, and how Stevie Nicks, across her life story, has chosen to spend her well-earned funds.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were a romantic couple and musical duo in the early 1970s, and after one album as Buckingham Nicks flopped, they accepted an offer to join and revamp Fleetwood Mac. Barely skirting poverty during their five years together, Buckingham and Nicks were given a $200 weekly salary each — and they made a lot more after the 1975 self-titled Fleetwood Mac album was released and sold millions of copies. 

Nicks said they suddenly had more cash than they could even handle. "I had hundred-dollar bills everywhere," Nicks recalled in "Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks," by Stephen Davis. "And since we hadn't spent any money in five years, we didn't even know how to spend money. I was putting hundred-dollar bills through the wash and then finding them all crumpled and bleached out, and then hanging them on the line with the rest of our stuff."

Inundated with currency and with plenty more on the way, Nicks made a decision to which she'd always remain faithful. "I said, 'That's it. I'm never looking at another price tag again.' And I meant it."

After the money for her Fleetwood Mac work in the mid-1980s started to roll in and the initial bafflement of being suddenly wealthy receded, Stevie Nicks figured out what she wanted to do with some of her newfound wealth. She bought a piano, but not just some ordinary piano, but rather a custom-made black grand piano constructed by Bösendorfer. "Right after the 'Rumours' record, I sent my friend to the factory to pick it out for me," Nicks told Vanity Fair. She can't read music and never had a piano lesson in her life, but the piano is the tool Nicks used to write all of her songs.

Made by one of the most highly regarded piano crafters in the world, Bösendorfer pianos can cost over $300,000. After heeding the warning of a dream to move her piano out of Los Angeles so it wouldn't get damaged in an earthquake, Nicks' instrument has a bullet lodged in its lid, sustained from a shooting on a freeway during a move to Nicks' house in Phoenix.

Another indulgence that Nicks regularly allows herself is lightbulbs. "I'm obsessed with lighting," she said. "I'm constantly shopping for different lightbulbs. I love rainbow lightbulbs. And, also, one should not live without dimmers. Life is all about lighting.

There seems to be something very attractive to celebrities about owning a social hotspot, be it a club, venue, or restaurant. It's not cheap to buy into such an establishment, and they generally don't last long because they're expensive to maintain without much chance for profits. It's a financial trap and a potential money pit, yet it's one that enchanted Stevie Nicks in the 1980s, right after she'd sold the most records she ever would with Fleetwood Mac, as well as launching a successful solo career.

The brainchild of French designer Philippe Starck, Starck Club opened in a disused warehouse made of concrete in a remote stretch of Dallas. Converted into both a dance club and a performance venue, Nicks was an owner of the glitzy, glamorous, and wealthy-courting clientele from the start, even protecting her investment by staging a concert at the Starck Club the first night it opened in 1984. Cultural historians say the spot was the origin point of electronic dance music in the U.S., as well as the place where the club drug ecstasy was first popularized (it was legal at the time and even sold by the club). Open for only five years, Nicks and other owners of "the Studio 54 of Dallas" didn't get to make much money off the business for long.

A handful of the biggest rock stars are almost as well-known for their look as they are for their sound. The most distinctive thing about Stevie Nicks' stage presence is her use of shawls. Rarely — if ever — over the past 50 years or so, has Nicks performed in front of a crowd without some kind of elegant, wispy, and billowy wrap, cape, shroud, or drapery adorning her head and shoulders at some point in the show. They make a great prop for Nicks' movements, being something to twist and play with, or just to spin while the singer dances and undulates.

As the public figure most associated with shawls, it seems cosmically correct that Nicks is probably also the world's most avid collector of shawls. "... there's thousands of them. If I ever write my life story, maybe that should be the name of my book: 'There's Enough Shawls to Go Around,'" Nicks told Rolling Stone in 2019. "All my vintage stuff is protected for all my little goddaughters and nieces. I'm trying to give my shawls away." While Nicks owns shawls in many different styles and of various ages, she treats them all with care. "I have my shawl vault — they're all in temperature-controlled storage."

Throughout the first few decades of the fame and financial success that music brought to Stevie Nicks, she also dealt with long-term addictions to the prescription tranquilizer Klonopin and cocaine. These issues lasted for a period of eight years, from 1986 to 1994. Nicks purchased and imbibed so much of the expensive stimulant that she nearly became a rock star without the use of a body part, or even one that died before their time.

Nicks managed to overcome her substance misuse issues with the aid of the Betty Ford Center's rehabilitation services. She had started taking cocaine a decade earlier, right around the time when she'd joined Fleetwood Mac. The musician estimates that over a period of 10 years, she spent about $1 million on the drug, even before adjustment for inflation. Nicks was also lavish with that behaviour, routinely wearing her supply around her neck on a chain in a diamond-encrusted gold-and-turquoise bottle.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Perhaps because the public has collectively conflated her songs about witches and supernaturally powerful women, such as "Rhiannon," with the singer and songwriter who made them, Steve Nicks' look and sensibility have historically been described as witchy or witch-adjacent. After all, she is quite fond of certain types of clothing that evolved into a standard outfit over Nicks' decades in the public eye — flowing black dresses and very nice black boots are generally what Nicks wears both on stage and in her personal life. That clothing costs a lot of money, and Nicks collaborates with known fashion minds to populate her wardrobe.

During her first year in Fleetwood Mac in the mid-1970s, Nicks met and began collaborating with designer Margi Kent. Heeding a request for a uniform, Kent developed the all-black outfit that Nicks wore on many album covers, including that of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album "Rumours." Until the 2020s, Nicks wore heeled shoes and boots made by Pasquale Fabrizio, a leather crafter and supplier who works with top shoe brands like Prada and Louboutin. When she broke a toe, she had to move into more comfortable but no less exclusive footwear: she's a Balenciaga devotee now.

Nicks also treats her skin with a level of care that only comes from a spendy and name-brand source. "I use Crème de la mer at night. I can afford it," she told Elle UK (via Fleetwood Mac UK). A one-ounce jar of the stuff costs $200.

Stevie Nicks doesn't spend all of her millions of dollars on herself. She's a generous giver of gifts, and Nicks shows off her largesse even to people she doesn't know that well. "Cashmere blankets are my favorite thing," Nicks declared to Rolling Stone in 2024. "That is what I buy for my friends if there's a special occasion." It also goes back to the '70s, when at around the time of the release of "Rumours," Nicks first found herself extremely wealthy and in the company of celebrity friends and seasoned shoppers. "Don Henley and J.D. Souther took me into a store in Los Angeles called Maxfield Blue, now Maxfield, in 1977. And they took me there, and I got my first cashmere blanket. I always laugh and say, 'They taught me how to spend money,' those two guys."

Nicks later developed the hobby of designing blankets, and she gives out all kinds of cashmere treasures. "I bought Travis Kelce a blanket," she revealed. That can add up, as designer blankets — cashmere or not — can sell for thousands of dollars a piece.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, following big sales of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" and "Tusk," Stevie Nicks took up residence in a modern and sleek condo situated on the beach in the Marina Del Rey section of Los Angeles. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom home with wide views of the sea, a sunken living room, a covered balcony, and an elevator, was Nicks' home until 1982. It went up for sale in 2025 for just under $4 million.

Nicks was born in Phoenix, and she resettled in the area in 1980 to be near her parents. Loaded with money after five lucrative years in Fleetwood Mac, she bought a rambling home located in nearby Paradise Valley, constructed in the Santa Fe style that was separated into two distinct areas. Nicks lived in one part, and her brother, his wife, and their daughter lived in the other. The interior of the 7,300-square-foot residence was more gothic and classical than American Southwestern, with touches like a gigantic arched fireplace, a big wooden door, and stained glass windows. 

"I have to live in dramatic places. For me, atmosphere is everything," Nicks told InStyle in 2002 (via The Nicks Fix). The singer lived in the home for many years, but after finding she spent less and less time there, she put it up on the market in 2007 and quickly sold it for $3 million.

Another home of Stevie Nicks, and one which remained extant during the 2024 wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles and many nearby properties, sits in the Pacific Palisades area overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A two-story home in the Spanish style of architecture, it was built in 1927. Nicks has put a personal interior design touch throughout the space, filling each room with her treasures and adhering to each spot's unique color palette. The red living room was built around a painting of a young girl that Nicks acquired in 1998; that piece is on the wall above the fireplace, nearby Persian carpet and velvet couches. Nicks does her work in the study, also known as the green room because of its green velvet couches; it offers a complete, circular view of the Pacific Ocean.

Nicks keeps two private bedrooms in the home. One of them is gold, and is full of gold-beaded pillows, golden quilts, and a canopy of shimmering scarves. The other bedroom is all white, and is outfitted with antique furniture and fixtures.

Stevie Nicks owns many properties, and while some are mansions, others are more modestly sized. However, Nicks's smallest home was still more expensive than most other residences, and is certainly among the priciest of its building style. Paradise Cove is an 85-acre area of beachfront real estate in the high-income area of Malibu, California. It's a gated neighborhood that contains exactly 265 trailers, also known as manufactured homes, which are assembled at a factory according to a schematic before being trucked to and unloaded on a pre-purchased property. 

In 2014, Nicks bought an extant manufactured home in Paradise Cove, spending $4 million on the residence. Most of the technically mobile houses measure less than 1,000 square feet, but not the one Nicks purchased: It was outfitted with four bedrooms, real bamboo floors, and a deck that winds around the entire home.

Powered by Stevie Nicks' vocals and songwriting, Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album "Rumours" went on to sell more than 21 million copies in the United States alone. As a result of that success, Fleetwood Mac was so popular and in such demand that, when it released the double LP "Tusk" in 1979 and toured at some of the largest arenas in the United States to promote it, the musicians held most of the bargaining chips. Fleetwood Mac had one of the weirdest backstage riders, punctuated by Stevie Nicks' insistence on hotel accommodations. Promoters needed to procure the singer a hotel room that would be painted entirely pink before her arrival, and then outfitted with an all-white piano she could use if songwriting inspiration struck.

Even then, if Nicks didn't like the room, she'd leave and rack up a bill at another establishment. "One of Steve's almost comedic needs," bandmate Mick Fleetwood told Vulture, "is what we call hotel-hopping, where we all check into a hotel and she goes, 'Oh, I need to try another one,' and just checks out. She should be a hotel critic."

It should go without saying that Stevie Nicks amassed her fortune through music, first and foremost from her many decades as one of the singers and main songwriters in Fleetwood Mac. The albums by the long-running band on which Nicks prominently featured are by far its best-selling ones. The 1975 self-titled Fleetwood Mac LP sold 9.4 million copies globally, 1977's "Rumours" moved in excess of 35 million around the world, "Tusk" sold 6.6 million units, and "Mirage" added another 5.5 million to the tally, among others. Nicks' solo albums released just after those Fleetwood Mac peak years won over a lot of record buyers, too; 1982's "Bella Donna" alone sold 5 million copies. Nicks not only received performance royalties as a singer on all those records, but a cut of the songwriting profits, too.

As her career as a recording artist began to wind down in the 2020s, Nicks scored another payday, and the biggest one of her career to boot. In December 2020, talent agency and rights management firm Primary Wave paid Nicks $100 million for an 80% share of her music publishing rights.