FROM SCHOOL DAYS TO FRONT PAGES
Tulisa Contostavlos was still a teenager when she first found fame.
She teamed up with her cousin Dappy and their friend Fazer in N-Dubz, a reference to north London where they grew up, while they were still at school.
The first of more than 10 top 40 hits came in 2007 and by 2010 she had moved into television and was presenting a documentary about young people caring for parents with mental health problems which drew on her own experiences growing up with her mother.
She also featured in the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall show Being ... N-Dubz, which followed the group over two series, but she really hit the big time in 2011 when she joined the judging panel on Simon Cowell's show The X Factor.
She described it as her "dream job" and stormed to success at the first attempt, helping pull in some of its highest ever viewing figures and steering her girl group Little Mix to victory.
The singer stayed on for another series but the high-profile show put her own private life under the spotlight and revelation after revelation ended up on the front pages.
Along the way, Tulisa spoke candidly about her troubled childhood which included a suicide attempt and self-harm and confessed to feeling out of place on the show, saying: "I'll think, 'I don't belong here.'
"I get those moments now and again. Although I can be very feisty, that's a defence mechanism for me. I'm defensive because too many years of my life I was treated like s***."
There was also controversy when spin-off show The Xtra Factor was rapped by TV watchdog Ofcom for promoting her perfume.
In 2012, she signed a publishing deal for two novels and an autobiography which detailed for the first time how she was drugged and sexually abused when she was 16 and also revealed her involvement in a girl gang.
Later that year, she said she was "devastated" after a video of her sharing an "intimate moment" with an ex-boyfriend was circulated on the internet.
The singer told fans she had been "deeply betrayed" and took legal action which ended months later with her at London's High Court accepting "sincere apologies" from ex-boyfriend Justin Edwards.
She told reporters the rapper had "messed with the wrong woman" and that she was a "stronger, wiser young woman who has taken this experience and learnt from it".
Her love life - including a relationship with footballer Danny Simpson - kept her on the front pages as her career started to flag with lacklustre sales for her debut solo album, which one critic described as having "a pound-shop Rihanna sound".
Worse was to follow last year when she was axed from The X Factor, telling fans on Twitter "it's time to do something different".
A month later she was accused of boasting that she could "sort out" cocaine for an undercover journalist. She vehemently denied brokering the deal and punched the air when the trial collapsed today, declaring outside court: "This whole case was an horrific and disgusting entrapment."
But the courtroom ordeals are not over for the 26-year-old star.
She is due back in court soon to find out the result of another trial after she was accused of hitting celebrity blogger Savvas Morgan at the V Festival in Chelmsford, Essex, last year.
