This former Spice Girl has had her share of relationship ups and downs but there's one thing about love that Mel B knows for sure – it comes in all shapes, forms and genders.
Melanie Brown, aka Mel B, who's always been candid about being sexually fluid, reflected on her long-term relationship with her ex-girlfriend, movie director Christine Crokos (48).
“I feel like I am [a member of the LGBTQ+ community],” the 48-year-old singer told Attitude magazine.
“I happened to fall in love with a woman and was with her for five years.”
While Mel identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community she’s never seen the need to label her sexual orientation.
“I didn’t start off my sexual journey going, 'I’m this, I’m that, I’m bisexual'. I was, and always will be, very open.
“I don’t want to put a label on it, but I’ve always thought women are beautiful."
Mel and Christine were first linked in the early 2000s after a picture of them kissing circulated online.
Not long after, Mel and her first husband, Jimmy Gulzar, announced their divorce. They share a daughter, Phoenix Chi (25).
Mel and Christine largely kept their relationship out of the spotlight but in the years since their split in 2006 the Wannabe singer has shared a little about it.
"It wasn’t experimentation," she told Gay Star News in 2019.
"I fell in love with a woman for five years. An experiment doesn’t last five years.
“We barely argued, because we both thought the same, wanted the same out of life," Mel said in a 2020 episode of her podcast, The Truth Flirts.
"It was really interesting when I actually compare it to my other relationships.”
Mel has also revealed she and Spice Girls bandmate Geri Horner had a brief sexual relationship in the 1990s, which Geri denied.
Mel has also been romantically linked to Eddie Murphy (63) with whom she has a daughter, Angel Iris (17), and director Stephen Belafonte, who she married in 2007. They divorced 10 years later and share a daughter, Madison (12).
Mel is now engaged to her hairstylist, Rory McPhee, but she and Christine have remained friends.
“We still talk to this day,” she said.
The mom-of-three says she's open to any of her daughters coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Whatever my kids want to be, I would celebrate. Whether they were gay, bisexual, transgender, I wouldn’t care. I would love and support them as my daughters.”