Liam Payne's ex fiancée speaks out about death of One Direction star for the first time

Warning: This article contains discussion of drug addiction which some readers may find distressing

Liam Payne’s ex-fiancée has spoken out about the death of the singer for the first time

Maya Henry and the former One Direction star officially started dating in August 2019 before he proposed that November. The pair then broke up in May 2022, and the singer dated Kate Cassidy until his sudden death in October 2024.

In a written statement for Rolling Stone Magazine, the 25-year-old said while she loved Payne ‘deeply’, he did things that ‘hurt’ her in ways she’ll ‘never fully understand’ and continued to do so after their split.

On 6 October, 2024, a week-and-a-half before the singer’s death, Henry shared a TikTok alleging Payne had been harassing her, her family and her friends. This was followed by her lawyer issuing a cease-and-desist order to the 31-year-old.

Maya Henry and Liam Payne were engaged in 2019 ( Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/Getty Images for The Business of Fashion)

No public comment came on this from Payne before his death, which was caused by ‘polytrauma’ as he fell from the third-floor balcony of the Casa Sur Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 16 October 2024.

Henry explained that it was ‘the drug use and addictions’ that initially tore the pair apart.

“On drugs, he became someone unrecognisable — so different from his sober self,” she wrote. “I kept hoping each incident would be a wake-up call for him to get help, but it never was.”

The model said she convinced herself she ‘could fix things’ and believed ‘he would change’.

“I put myself in situations that were unsafe and harmful, ignoring every red flag because I didn’t want to give up on him,” she wrote. “I let myself believe that love could be stronger than addiction, that if I endured enough, if I sacrificed enough, he would see how much I cared and finally choose a different path.

"But that’s not how addiction works. No matter how much I tried to save him, I was drowning in the process.”

Payne died in October 2024 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Henry went on to say that ‘he was struggling’ with parts of himself and it wasn’t the ‘betrayals or addiction’ that broke them up.

“It was the realisation that I had spent years in something that was never what I thought it was. I don’t fault him for his struggles,” she said.

She added that she ‘stood by him in his darkest moments’ and when it was over, she was ‘left with nothing but emptiness’.

Henry said: “I wasn’t just heartbroken; I felt defrauded, as so many women in my position would. But what I do know is this: It wasn’t about me or anything I did. It was about struggles beyond my control. And in the end, I had to choose myself. I had to walk away, no matter how much it hurt, because staying in his world meant losing myself.”

After Payne’s death, she says what hurts the most is she is ‘left with the aftermath of his actions that continue to unfold’.

“As I’ve uncovered the extent of his non-consensual image sharing — images he acquired during our engagement and shared without my knowledge or consent — I’m faced with the complexity of grieving for someone I cared so deeply about despite the pain they have caused me,” Henry concluded.

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