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It's been 28 holiday cheer-filled years since Mariah Carey released her iconic holiday single, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in 1994.

And every year it rises swiftly on the Billboard Hot 100, reminding everyone that she's Christmas royalty—and embracing the fact that she has a hold on everyone during the holiday season. Ms. Claus, who?

"It's so exciting because it’s at Christmas, which is my favorite, but it's also like, what a validating thing to have happen [to] my first Christmas song that I ever wrote," she told Billboard. "How did I know that that was going to become a thing every year? I couldn’t have known it. And I've grown to love it more…it makes me happy every year."

Mariah fans will have a lot to cheer about this week, since Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas To All! airs on CBS and streams on Paramount+ on Tuesday. It also features Mariah performing a slew of her hits.

Speaking of holiday spirit, Mariah's been cashing in on Christmas for decades. So much so that her current net worth is a merry amount of money—to the tune of over $300 million, according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.

Here's how the pop star made all that (Christmas cookie) dough:

Mariah's made millions off of her iconic holiday hit.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Mariah is the best-selling female artist of all time when it comes to albums. She has sold a total of 72 million albums, which means she likely sees a few dollars off every album sold, after earning out her advance against royalties.

In 2017, The Economist reported that Mariah earned $60 million in royalties for "All I Want for Christmas Is You" alone, from the time it released in 1994. (That's an average of $2.6 million per year!) But last year, she was estimated to have made an additional $12.5 million, which brings her total up to $72 million—and that's not including what she'll make this year, per Forbes. Celebrity Net Worth estimates that she'll net a cool $600,000 in 2022 on royalties for "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

(P.S. The #iconic holiday song apparently took only 15 minutes to write!)

Peep Mariah's new music video for "All I Want For Christmas Is You" below:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aAkMkVFwAoo%3Fstart%3D0

Her debut album was released in 1990.

Mariah started off as a background singer for Brenda K. Starr, but quickly rose up in the world. In 1988, she met Tommy Mottola, the head of Columbia Records at the time, at an industry event. Mariah slipped him her demo tape, and he wanted to sign her immediately, NBC Bay Area reported.

Her debut album was released in 1990, and since then, she's become the first female artist to sell 70 million albums in the United States, Vibe reported.

And along the way, she married and divorced Tommy.

After divorcing Mottola in 1998, she signed to EMI's Virgin Records, who gave her $28 million in a severance payment when she left, per The New York Times. When she signed with Universal Music Group, the deal was that she'd be paid around $7.5 for each album, the outlet reported.

Today, Mariah's royalties and streams have paid TF off.

The royalties Mariah collects from her music are about 20 percent, plus she gets multi-million dollar advances when it comes to her albums, per The Wall Street Journal. It's mainly because of her songwriting abilities, according to Forbes.

Since Spotify pays artists at least $0.0033 per stream, according to USA Today, and she has 53,867,353 monthly listeners as of December 2022, that means she makes around $177,762 per month, if each listener streams a song just once.

The other platforms (Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.) contribute even more to the money she makes just from streams.

Her divorces have been kept pretty private.

The settlement of her divorce from Tommy Mottola in 1998 is not public, so it's unknown whether she gained anything at that time.

But she was married to Nick Cannon from 2008 to 2016, separating in 2014, PEOPLE wrote. Her yearly income totaled $6.3 million in 2014, according to TMZ. Mariah doesn't have to pay Nick any money according to their settlement. However, Nick pays $5,000 a month into a trust fund for their twins. (Frankly, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the reported $3 million dollars a year he pays in child support between his 11 kids, per The New York Post.)

Mariah's also raking in the dollars from book deals.

In 2015, Mariah released a children's book with Doubleday Books for Young Readers at Penguin Random House, titled All I Want for Christmas Is You. (Starting to see a theme here?)

It's about "a young girl whose greatest Christmas wish is for a new puppy," giving new meaning to the song.

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