Mel B
After marriage, she was a customer at discount stores
© carrie-nelson/ImageCollect
Mel B has opened up about her financial struggles following her divorce. Among other things, she shopped at discount stores.
Melanie Brown aka Mel B, 48, returned to her native Leeds after ten years of marriage to TV producer Stephen Belafonte, 48. The ex-Spice Girl was in such bad financial shape that she had to move in with her mother with her three children. This is what the 48-year-old reports in an interview with the British “The Sun”. “People assume: ‘She’s rich, she’s a Spice Girl’. But I went from performing on the Spice Girls reunion tour in front of thousands at Wembley in 2019 to bunking with my mum and my children with me to sleep in bed,” says the musician. “I didn’t expect this to happen in my 40s after a successful career, but I had nowhere else to go.”
Through the supermarket with a mask
She hasn’t bought a pint of milk in Los Angeles for years, “but when I got home I started shopping at Costco again and really enjoyed shopping at Lidl and Aldi,” Brown tells the Sun. “I stood in a queue for the first time in a long time.” Since it was during the Covid pandemic, no one recognized her while shopping because of the mask. “Relearning how much a packet of chips costs felt like taking my power back. I felt like I had returned to my roots in Leeds, which I have never forgotten.”
After the marriage ended in 2017, she only had 700 pounds (around 819 euros) in the bank because she had to fight expensive divorce and custody battles. It took five years until she was financially back on her own two feet and was able to move out of her mother’s, says Brown.
From 1998 to 2000, the Spice Girl was married to professional dancer Jimmy Gulzar, 49, with whom she has daughter Phoenix Chi, 25. Angel, 16, followed a short liaison (without marriage) with comedian Eddie Murphy, 62. From 2007 to 2017, the musician was the wife of TV producer Stephen Belafonte. Together they share custody of twelve-year-old Madison. The separation from Belafonte turned into a mud fight. Mel B accused her ex-husband of emotionally and physically abusing her. He, on the other hand, described her as a “dangerous liar.”
She has been in a relationship with her fiancé Rory McPhee, 36, since 2019. In an interview with The Sun, Mel B says of her partner: “He’s a family friend and I’ve known him for a long time. And he’s a great hairdresser! When I came back home in 2019, he looked after my curls and at the same time “My trust and my affection have increased, and so it has grown little by little.”