What Is Ryan Higa Nigahiga's Net Worth?
Ryan Higa is an American YouTube celebrity, actor, comedian, and producer who has a net worth of $10 million. Ryan Higa is best known for creating his popular and well-known YouTube channel, "Nigahiga." As an actor, he starred in the 2016 film "Tell Me How I Die." Higa has been nominated for three Streamy Awards and a Young Hollywood Award.
Early Life
Ryan Higa, also known by his YouTube name Nigahiga, was born on June 6, 1990, in Hilo, Hawaii. He attended Waiakea High School, where he was a wrestler. He graduated in 2008. Higa is an alumnus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he studied nuclear medicine. He competed in Judo and holds the rank of black belt. He later dropped out of university in order to start his career making online videos.
Career
Ryan is best known for creating his popular and well-known YouTube channel, "Nigahiga." He created the channel with his friends Sean Fujiyoshi, Tim Enos, and Tarynn Nago (known collectively as "The Yabo Crew"), but since moving to Las Vegas to attend UNLV, most videos of his videos have been solo efforts. Higa and Fujiyoshi started posting YouTube videos of themselves in mid-2006 while students at Waiakea High School. In these videos, the duo lip-synched to songs. Not long after, they expanded beyond songs, introducing a number of other comedic pieces. Occasional guest appearances were made by his friends. Two of the most popular videos, "How to Be Gangster" and "How to Be Emo," were removed due to copyright violations on Christmas Eve 2008, only to be put back on the channel in late August 2009, but then again removed just days later. In August 2009, they released a short film with a runtime of 26 minutes called "Ninja Melk." They released another short film called "Agents of Secret Stuff" in November 2010 and included guest appearances from Smosh, D-GTrix, Hiimrawn, and KassemG. Ryan's YouTube comedy videos have been viewed over 3.8 billion times. As of August 2018, Higa's YouTube channel, "Nigahiga," has over 21 million subscribers. For 677 consecutive days from 2009 to 2011, his YouTube channel was the most subscribed.
In 2015, Ryan formed the Ryan Higa Production Company, based at a studio in Henderson, Nevada. Higa created a parody K-pop group along with David Choi, Philip Wang, Jun Sung Ahn, and Justin Chon called Boys Generally Asian (BgA) in 2016. Their first song, "Dong Saya Dae," quickly garnered around 16 million YouTube views. Their second single, "Who's It Gunna Be," reached #1 on the K-pop charts. Ryan left the group in 2018 to move to California and pursue a degree in engineering.
(Photo by Edward Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)
Higa has also seen some success in film and television. Along with director and producer Richard Van Vleet, he created his first official feature-length film, "Ryan and Sean's Not So Excellent Adventure," which opened to sold-out theaters across California and Hawaii and was released on DVD in July 2009. Higa also guest-starred in "Supah Ninjas," playing DJ Elephant Head. In 2016, he appeared in the horror film "Tell Me How I Die." In 2021, he starred in the Netflix film "Finding 'Ohana."
As far as business ventures, Higa created Victorious Inc., which released an app called "TeeHee" in April 2015, but it was shut down just two years later in April 2017. Later that year, he published his memoir, "Ryan Higa's How to Write Good." In 2016, Ryan co-founded the LLC Ninja Melk with Kyle Schroeder and Kathleen Hahn. They launched an energy drink in May 2019, which took three years to develop. They made a stop motion short film in October 2019 to promote the drink, which he posted to his "nigahiga" YouTube channel.
Personal Life
Higa dated Tarynn Nago for several years. The couple split in 2010. As of this writing, Ryan has been in a relationship with actress Arden Cho.
