The 'Pour It Up' singer chose to mark her recent trip to New Zealand by getting a traditional Maori design inked onto her right hand using the excruciatingly painful yet traditional Ta Moko method.
A two-minute video has been posted online of Rihanna getting the arrow-shaped symbols - which run from her fingertips all the way to her forearm - inked onto her skin by tattoo artist Inia Taylor at the Moko Ink studio in West Auckland, who uses only a chisel, a mallet and ink pigment.
A statement on the Moko Ink website reads: ''Moko Ink is the worlds first Maori Tattoo Studio specialising in the contemporary use and creation of traditional Maori and Polynesian Tatu.
''We make one off body art keeping alive the language and traditions that are unique to the art form. All our art is custom designed for each person on a consultation basis.
''The language of Ta Moko is used to design a unique piece of body art expressing aspects that relate to the wearer.''
Dressed down in a grey hoodie, the 25-year-old star pulls a series of grimaces and laughs hysterically through the pain as Inia, helped by local singer Tiki Taane, gets to work on the design.
At one point, the process has to be temporarily stopped so Rihanna can wipe off the blood oozing from her swollen knuckles.
The ink-mad beauty has well over 20 tattoos on her body, including a Sanskrit prayer down her thigh and the word love on the middle finger of her left hand, and claims they all have spiritual meanings.
She said in the past: ''My tattoos are all spiritual and show how I feel about religion. I have a falcon which is an Egyptian falcon and is supposed to stand for God.''
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