How rich is Adele?

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated: 12:50 EST, 8 June 2011

Singer Adele has been not just making records but breaking them too.

What am I worth now? Adele was 9th in Sunday Times' richest young music stars list

The songstress, full name Adele Adkins, is worth an estimated £6m. Not bad for a girl from a far-from-affluent part of North London.

Her second album, 21, held on to the number one chart slot in the UK for a record-breaking 13 weeks while earlier this year she also became only the second ever artist to have two albums and two singles in the top five at the same time.

The Sunday Times placed Adele at number nine, the highest new entry, in its list of the richest young music stars. Her company Melted Stone showed £780,000 profit on £1.2m sales in 2008-9.

Adele was born in Tottenham, North London, to a teenage single mother and lived there until she was 11 when they moved to West Norwood, South London.

She went to the local comprehensive before winning a place at the Brit school for performing arts in Croydon where Leona Lewis and Jessie J were among her classmates.

Originally marketed as a soul singer, the 23-year-old has made her name as a songwriter too. She wrote 'Hometown Glory', about West Norwood, when she was aged just 16.

As part of a class project Adele uploaded three demo tracks to My Space and was subsequently spotted by XL Recordings which gave the star her first record deal at the age of 18. Her debut album, 19, was all about a boy who cheated on her. She won't name him.

'I got an album out of him. I used him more than he used me,' she told the Daily Mail.

However, the ex concerned later came out of the woodwork and tried to claim a cut of the profits for 'inspiring' the album which includes songs entitled Cold Shoulder and Melt My Heart To Stone. Her chequered romantic history also appears to be the main subject of her second album, 21, which includes hit single Someone Like You, another tale of lost love.

US is mine: Adele has conquered America too, winning Grammys along the way

Her show-stopping performance of the song at the 2011 Brit awards gave her a new flush of fame and sent Someone Like You straight to number one in the charts.

The songstress has conquered America too. Her second album 21 sold more than a million copies in the US in just seven weeks.

Adele's pretty generous with her cash. She gave every worker, including interns and cleaners, at XL Recordings a cool £1,000 bonus after 21 went seven times platinum in the UK.

And in July 2008, the singer paid £8,000 for a commissioned painting by Stella Vine in a charity auction in aid of Keep a Child Alive, a charity that helps African children and their families living with HIV/AIDS. Adele said she planned to ask Vine to paint a portrait of 'my mum and me.'

So far, 2011 has been a great year for Adele and, with an appearance at the iTunes Festival in the summer, amidst her sold out shows, it looks set to get even better.