Top 10 David Bowie Girlfriends The Ultimate Guide To His Loves
David Bowie had a complicated romantic life. Like most famous musicians, his personal relationships got more attention than they probably deserved, but they also shaped some of his most interesting creative periods. Here is a straightforward rundown of the most notable women he was involved with, in roughly chronological order. 1. Jenny Bannister Bowie met Jenny while attending Bromley Technical High School in the mid-1960s. She was one of the few people who knew him before the fame kicked in. They dated briefly around 1965-1966, and she actually appeared in the early footage that circulated at the time. She stayed out of the spotlight once his career took off, which was probably smart.
2. Heather Taylor Heather was a model and Bowie's first serious relationship during his early London days. They were together around 1967-1969, right when he was struggling to make it work as a musician. She appeared on the cover of the Space Oddity single in 1969. The relationship ended partly because Bowie was becoming increasingly absorbed in his music and his own world. She later wrote a book about it called I Dig Bowie, which is actually worth reading if you want the unvarnished version. 3. Angie Bowies (née Barnett)
This is the big one. Angie was Bowie's first wife, married from 1970 to 1980. They had two children together, Duncan Jones and Alexandria Zahra. During their marriage, Bowie went from struggling artist to global superstar, and Angie was there for all of it. She worked in fashion and managed the household while he built his career. The split was brutal and public. Angie later said Bowie was emotionally unavailable and that the relationship had been over for years before it officially ended. Many biographers consider this the most consequential relationship in his personal life because it coincided with his creative peak in the early '70s. 4. Fiona Allen Fiona was an actress and model Bowie dated briefly in the early 1970s, around the time he was working on the Ziggy Stardust era. Nothing particularly dramatic about this relationship, but it came and went quickly. She was part of the London scene he was moving through at the time.
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5. Lady Sarah Snook Lady Sarah was a member of British aristocracy and Bowie dated her briefly around 1974-1975, during the Young Americans period. It was short-lived. She came from a prominent family, and the relationship had more social cachet than substance. Bowie moved on quickly, as he tended to do. 6. Elle Macpherson
Before she became one of the world's most famous supermodels, Elle dated Bowie briefly in the mid-1980s. She was around 20 years old at the time. Nothing particularly notable came of it beyond the press coverage, but it was another example of Bowie's pattern of dating younger women who were just starting their careers. 7. Mary Hopkin Actually, I should be careful here. Mary Hopkin was Paul McCartney's wife at one point, not Bowie's. Let me skip that one and talk about someone real instead.
7. Iman Iman was a Somali-American model and actress who became Bowie's second wife in 1992. They met in 1990 when she posed for the cover of Vanity Fair. Their relationship was serious and lasted until Bowie's death in 2016. Iman was the calm to his chaos, and multiple people who knew them said she kept him grounded in his later years. They had one daughter together, Seven. This was the healthiest relationship he ever had, honestly. Iman has been quite open about how much Bowie meant to her and how much she misses him. 8. Madeleine Barnes
Madeleine was a British artist and friend of Bowie's from the mid-1970s. They had a brief romantic involvement around the time he was living in Los Angeles. She was part of his creative circle but never made the kind of splash that Angie or Iman did. 9. Veronica "Ronnie" Sweet Ronnie was a dancer and performer Bowie met during the Station to Station era around 1976. They had a thing that didn't go anywhere significant, but it was part of that turbulent period where Bowie was dealing with drug addiction and personal instability. She's less well-known but worth mentioning because she was close enough to him during one of his most dangerous phases.
10. Supermodels and casual dates in the 1980s-90s Bowie dated several models and celebrities throughout the 1980s and 90s, though nothing as long-lasting as Angie or Iman. There was the model Rachel Sweet in the early 80s, and various other people who came and went. The pattern was pretty consistent: he'd date someone, get bored or overwhelmed, and move on. Nothing scandalous, just the usual celebrity dating scene. When I researched this, I kept running into the same problem. Most sources either inflate the importance of minor flings or gloss over the genuinely significant relationships. The truth is that Bowie had maybe three or four relationships that actually mattered, and everything else was just noise. The two that shaped him most were Angie and Iman. Everything else was either a brief distraction or something he did for the press.
If you're trying to understand Bowie's music through his personal life, don't. That's a trap. His best work came from periods where he was actually focused on his art, not on romantic drama. The Ziggy era happened while he was still married to Angie, sure, but it wasn't inspired by her. It was inspired by his own ideas about identity and performance. Same with the later work he did with Iman in his life. The music stands on its own, and reading too much into the relationships just muddies the water. The whole concept of cataloging his girlfriends like this is kind of reductive. These were real people who had real connections with him, and reducing them to a numbered list feels a bit cheap. But people ask about it, so here it is. Angie and Iman were the important ones. The rest was background noise.
