Greatest Female Adult Entertainers
The 10 Greatest Female Porn Stars of the 21st Century
Porn isn’t new, and porn stars have been a thing for decades, but given the explosion in both internet access and speed in the last two decades, it’s no surprise that the 21st century saw an explosion of interest in online smut.
The numbers are impressive: modern estimates suggest that 10% of all internet searches are porn-related, a number that rises to 20% when you focus in on mobile searches, while just under 5% of all websites are porn-related, pornography represents some tens of thousands of terabytes of data, or about 37% of all the data stored online, according to an estimate quoted by the BBC.
No wonder, then, that adult performers, both male and female, have become minor celebrities, people we all recognize, even if most of the time we’re reluctant to admit it in public. In 2025, the mainstreaming of porn is basically a fait accompli, with big awards shows, podcasts and even mainstream film and television appearances of popular entertainers all pointing to the obvious: human beings are sexual creatures and we spend a whole lot of time masturbating to fantasies.
That having been acknowledged, it’s worth looking at which stars had the biggest influence on us over the first quarter of the 21st century. The following 10 women are distinguished not necessarily for their beauty or even their popularity, but for their huge impact on the adult industry. In ways large and small, these ten ladies forever changed adult entertainment.
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10. Bonnie Rotten
Year of Debut: 2012
If we’re going off of impact alone, Bonnie Rotten could probably move down a few spots. This gorgeous alt girl popularized the heavily tattooed look and helped to mainstream fetish pornography, from bondage scenes to gangbangs. Her work for the renowned Kink.com website won her both popularity and acclaim, including a 2014 Performer of the Year award and a 2015 Kinkiest Performer at the prestigious AVN awards. In her eleven-year career, she starred in over 300 scenes and even spent some time behind the camera, directing 20 films for Elegant Angel, Juicy Entertainment and her own Bonnie Rotten Productions studio.
9. Adriana Chechik
Year of Debut: 2013
Adriana Chechik is another legendary performer who took her girl-next-door looks to the naughty limit, starring in more than 1,000 scenes in her 11 years in front of the camera. Adriana was pushing the envelope from her very first year in the industry, starring in multiple gangbang scenes and twice winning AVN’s Most Outrageous Sex Scene award. Her career as a mattress actress has largely come to an end, but you can still catch her on Twitch, TikTok and YouTube, where she’s amassed hundreds of thousands of happy followers.
8. Mia Malkova
Year of Debut: 2012
There’s no shame in riding a wave, especially if you take your temporary fame and translate it into a 13-year long career, but it’s no secret that Mia Malkova became a star because of her impressive ass, which came to the world’s attention right around the time that twerking booties became a larger cultural phenomenon. She’s starred in over 700 scenes, won coveted XBIZ awards like Best New Starlet as well as AVN’s Best Group Sex Scene (though somehow she was cheated out of the Most Epic Ass award), and now spends her time livestreaming on Twitch to a subscriber base of more than half a million people.
7. Dillion Harper
Year of Debut: 2012
The definition of “cute as a button,” Dillion Harper has been a fixture in the porn industry for more than a decade, encompassing over 600 scenes as well as a mega-popular subscription service on her own website, Dillionation.com, as well as OnlyFans, where her fans can continue to support her. If Mia Malkova is famous for her derriere, Dillion is best known for her perfect breasts, for which she won PornHub’s coveted “Nicest Tits” award in 2019.
6. Mia Khalifa
Year of Debut: 2014
Mia Khalifa is perhaps the first name on this list to be more famous for what she did after her porn career than during it. In fact, she arguably inaugurated a trend by which young actresses use a short-lived adult career as a springboard to more mainstream outlets. With just over 50 scenes under her belt, the Lebanese-born Mia Khalifa became infamous for appearing in a sex scene wearing a hijab, sparking both global popularity and global outrage. Since then, however, she has been parlaying her fame into a lucrative career as a sports commentator, webcam model, OnlyFans creator, and even artisan, creating her own line of jewelry.
5. Lana Rhoades
Year of Debut: 2016
Propelled by her beauty and her on-screen charisma, Lana Rhoades had a brief but extremely successful porn career, starring in more than 400 scenes between 2016 and 2017 and winning AVN’s Hottest Newcomer and Best Anal Sex Scene awards. Since then, however, she has branched out into other fields, hosting a tell-all podcast titled 3 Girls 1 Kitchen, designing a line of lingerie, and even launching a controversial memecoin, aptly named PAWGcoin. To this day, she remains one of the most-searched actresses on Pornhub, with her videos amassing hundreds of millions of views.
4. Tori Black
Year of Debut: 2007
There are many factors that led to the explosion in porn’s popularity in the past decade or so, from technological improvements like faster internet connections and better cameras to decentralized distribution options like OnlyFans and webcam-focused sites, but one reason, in hindsight, stands out: conventionally attractive women, who would otherwise have confined themselves to mainstream modeling, started doing adult entertainment. Tori Black is the obvious case in point. Her incredible good looks have allowed her to grace the cover of Penthouse magazine as well as win back-to-back AVN awards for Female Performer of the Year, the adult entertainment industry’s equivalent of an Oscar for Best Actress.
3. Sasha Grey
Year of Debut: 2006
Remember how we spoke about the crossover between the mainstream entertainment world and pornography? Nobody had bridged that divide quite as successfully, before or since, as Sasha Grey. Her adult entertainment career spanned eight years and included starring in over 450 scenes, winning 15 awards (including an AVN Female Performer of the Year) and multiple hall of fame inductions, but she’s also starred in more mainstream fare, with highlights including a cameo on HBO’s Entourage and a starring role in Steven Soderbergh’s film The Girlfriend Experience.
2. Jenna Haze
Year of Debut: 2001
The first true porn star of the 21st century, Jenna Haze is a genuine pioneer, with more than 750 scenes and a half-dozen major awards on her resume, including AVN’s 2009 Female Performer of the Year award. But what makes Haze stand out, in hindsight, is her entrepreneurialism. Unlike many stars, who disappear when they retire, Haze took her talents behind the camera, founding her own production studio, Jennaration X Studios, helping to give former talent much more creative control within the industry.
1. Riley Reid
Year of Debut: 2010
In terms of popularity, influence, name recognition, and career accomplishments, this was a no-contest from the jump. Riley Reid is one of the world’s best-known and most-watched porn stars, and has been for most of her multi-decade career. She has more than 1,500 performer credits, but even when she retired from mainstream pornography, she kept active as a cam model and subscription-based creator through her personal website ReidMyLips.com. Outside of porn, she maintains an extremely popular TikTok account and has her own clothing line, appropriately named Eighteen Plus.
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