GONE TOO SOON

Justin Bieber’s Model Ex, 34, Dies Months After Having Baby

Sahara Ray’s cause of death has not yet been revealed.

Model Sahara Ray, who once dated singer Justin Bieber, has died at the age of 34, according to TMZ.

The star, who was romantically linked to Bieber in August 2016, when Ray posted a video of her and Bieber skinny-dipping in Hawaii on Instagram, gave birth to her daughter, Snow, only nine months ago.

“She passed away last night surrounded by family at the hospital. She was so loved,” her family told the site. No cause of death has been revealed.

The Australian-born star is the daughter of big-wave surfing legend Tony Ray. She grew up surfing before she parlayed her modeling career into creating her own swimwear brand, Sahara Ray Swim.

Her death comes after she revealed she had been battling the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome. The condition left her partially paralyzed in April 2024 after she was hit by a drunk driver, she revealed in a post on Instagram.

“So basically, right now I’m paralyzed from the tops of my upper thighs all the way down to my feet. I can’t walk at all,” she said at the time.

“I’m pretty lucky to be alive,” she also said. She later shared her journey to walk again with her followers before welcoming her baby girl earlier this year. She has never publicly revealed her daughter’s father.

Videos posted just months before Ray’s death show that she had successfully regained her mobility.

Ray and Lottie Moss, 28, were close friends around 2021, until the friendship publicly unraveled in a messy 2023 Instagram feud in which Ray accused Moss of drug use and Moss responded that her former friend was “a very sick girl.”

Moss wrote in a tribute to Ray on Monday, “I really wish I had replied to your last message and given you a call back—whatever happened between us, we had a great few years of friendship.”

“I had some of my funniest and craziest memories with you—you were one of those people that you remember after meeting once because your energy was infectious. Goodbye Sahara,” she added.

After Bieber, 32, and Ray’s brief relationship in 2016, he was later linked to Sofia Richie, Selena Gomez, and then Hailey Baldwin, whom he is now married to. The couple shares one son.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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