Charlotte Church is living a very different life from when she found fame and fortune in her singing heyday.
Almost three decades ago, the Classical BRIT Award winner, now 38, shot to fame with her stunning vocals aged just 12. The child singer branched into pop music in 2005, and sold more than 10 million records worldwide, seeing her amass a staggering fortune of £25million by the time she was 17.
By 2010, the singer-songwriter - who split from fiance rugby star Gavin Henson - was said to be down to £11 million. And now, Charlotte, who has found a new role at her wellness retreat, says she is 'no longer a millionaire'. The mum-of-three has reportedly been forced to downsize and sell her home, known as the Spinney, in Dinas Powys, Wales, which she reportedly paid £1.3 million for in 2010.
The Voice of an Angel star - who has children Ruby, 15, Dexter, 14, and with her husband, musician Jonathan Powell, shares daughter Frida, 2, - took a step back from the spotlight after becoming a mum. In 2022, she teased plans of a comeback but said her family must come first.
She said: "My main job in life is as a mother, so as long as [work] doesn’t take me away from my beautiful babies too much." Charlotte explained she would 'love it if someone gave her the money to make an amazing album'.
She revealed: "The album I want to make is going to be traversing many different styles and I need an orchestra, which is expensive. But, to be honest, I’m mellow now. I’ve been doing this since I was 12 so I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to prove," reported OK!
In a 2014 interview with BBC One Wales, Charlotte touched on her money woes following her immense success and said: "I will have to work for the rest of my life. Not because I want to but because I have to. I always understood that all that stuff isn't important and my career was not the be and end all."
In the same year, she told Stylist magazine that she wanted to find a way to sustain her lavish expenditure. "I haven't got a lot of money. I've got enough to be comfortable if I was reasonable for the rest of my life, but I'm not reasonable, so I will have to find a way to sustain my lifestyle."
In a change of pace since motherhood, Charlotte ran a non-fee-paying school for the local community from the six-bedroom Spinney home, said to boast three acres of land. It had been listed with a guide price of £2.25 million last year, as reported by WalesOnline at the time.
Earlier this year, it was said to have been sold after the price was reduced to £2million, with the Sun reporting last month that Charlotte had made almost a million-pound profit through the sale. She's said to have sold the home in order to "massively downsize" to a semi-detached house with her family.
It has been suggested that the move was in part due to finances, with Charlotte telling Closer magazine in a recent interview: "I am not a millionaire anymore." Charlotte told Closer that the Spinney was "beautiful" and included a "big mansion house" close to a forest.
She said: "We had a school there for a bit and a studio. When it is used by the community, it makes sense, but when it is not used, it doesn't." Last June, Charlotte took a step in a new direction for her career, with the opening of her countryside wellness retreat, The Dreaming.
The singer opened up about the £1.5million renovation of the expansive Welsh property, the former home of Laura Ashley in the Elan Valley, as she had to overcome a series of planning issues. The retreat features a "womb room" and vagina-shaped showers.
Appearing on Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett's Dish podcast, Charlotte talked about how she transformed the stunning building. She said: "We're flanked by two waterfalls, either side. One which has got hydro mill, so we get a lot of our power from the hydro mill in the Elan Valley, which is situated in the Cambrian Mountains.
"And it's just like, oh, it's so beautiful. I love it so much. I've been doing a renovation of it for the last two years, which was hardcore. But amazing. Like I really got to just be really creative and just put like, all of my creativity into, into something so different to, you know, music or anything that I would generally think I was creative at, I suppose."
Explaining her role at the retreat, she said: "I'm a sound healer now, so I'm doing stuff at The Dreaming, which is really about pulling out the strands of how sound can be used for healing, how voice can be used for healing. I wanna sort of try and meld this idea of music and healing, and voice and healing, with that joy and ecstasy."
Prices for breaks start from £450 for three days, however The Dreaming offers a "pay what you can space on every three-day retreat". Activities include yoga, a sound healing ceremony, foraging, mythic storytelling, star-gazing, cold water immersion, singing at dawn, den building, sensory portal building, painting, dance, dreamwork, outdoor cinema, herbalism, woodwork, meditation, Qi Gong, silent disco and night time forest bathing.
Alongside an immersion in nature, the retreat offers hearty, homemade vegetarian meals. The food is something Charlotte has embraced, having recently revamped her attitude to her diet.
“I’ve just read a book, Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken, which has completely changed my eating habits, which will therefore change my life," she said in an interview with the Mirror last year. "It explains how we’re all eating all these chemicals, which disrupt the appetite pathways.
"The correlation with obesity is frightening – our bodies don’t even know what’s hungry and what’s not. My relationship with food was always a bit of a rebellion, I think in part because I was scrutinised so much as a young person and throughout my life. My weight was always part of that scrutiny, so I really kicked against it.
"I was really insistent that I would do and eat whatever I wanted – ‘I’m not becoming what you think I should be’. So when it came to food, I might try changing things for a couple of days, but had absolutely no sticking power.
"I had a pretty well-balanced diet, but I totally ate junk food as well, had loads of sweets – I was a proper sugar fiend. I ate whatever I wanted, all of the time. I always assumed that when I had to really start to watch what I ate, to look after my body, which I was thinking would be when I was about 40, it was going to be really difficult but I would just have to do it.
“But something in this book has clicked and it completely changed my diet overnight, cutting out anything that’s not ‘real’ food. It hasn’t even been a struggle, which I never in a million years thought would happen. I’m pleasantly surprised by the ease of this transition.”
Meanwhile, Charlotte recently launched her first podcast, Kicking Back with the Cardiffians on BBC Sounds. On the podcast she discusses her Welsh heritage, family bonds, her working class identity and growing up in Cardiff.