The Highest-Paid Dead Celebrities Of 2025

For the 25th annual Forbes ranking, The Notorious B.I.G., Miles Davis and Jimmy Buffett join a heavenly lineup of musicians as the greatest earners in the great beyond. Plus: How Michael Jackson earned $3.5 billion in the afterlife. In 2001, Elvis Presley topped Forbes’ first list tracking the highest-earning celebrity estates, and The King has appeared on every edition of the rankings in the 25 years since, earning over $1.2 billion during that span. Yet it’s another member of music royalty who has truly broken the paradigm for posthumous earnings—Elvis’ onetime son-in-law, Michael Jackson. The King of Pop’s estate has...