Iman has offered a tender window into how she navigated the loss of her husband, revealing that she put her own grief on hold to steady their teenage daughter first. The supermodel and activist, 71, said the immediate aftermath of David Bowie's death reshaped the order of her own mourning.
A mother first
When Bowie died in 2016, the couple's daughter, Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones, was 15. Iman said getting Lexi through the loss consumed everything else. "I was so busy trying to get her through that, so I didn't pay attention to my own grief," she explained, adding simply, "So actually, my grief came later." The admission reframes a very public loss as a private act of parenting.
When the grief finally arrived
Once her own mourning did come, Iman said she reached a point where she wanted to set a limit around it. She described no longer wanting every thought of Bowie to bring tears, reasoning that endless sorrow is not what the people we lose would want for us. The goal she set instead was to keep the memory itself joyful.
Refusing the past tense
That approach has shaped how she speaks about him in the years since. Iman has consistently rejected language that files Bowie away as past tense, once correcting someone who referred to him as her late husband. Through memory, she has said, her love for him still lives, a stance she carries into the tributes she shares publicly.
How they began
Their story started on a blind date in Los Angeles in 1990. Bowie later called it love at first sight, while Iman has said her own feelings took a few months to catch up. They married in 1992, first privately in Lausanne, Switzerland, and again later that year in Florence, building a family that stayed largely out of the spotlight.
The family they built
Lexi was born in August 2000, and Iman also has a son from an earlier relationship. Bowie died at 69 following a battle with liver cancer, leaving Iman to hold the family together while carrying a loss the whole world was mourning alongside her. Her focus, by her own telling, stayed on her daughter.
Keeping the memory alive
Iman regularly posts tributes online, especially around anniversaries and Father's Day, keeping Bowie present rather than distant. In January, she marked both the decade since his death and his final album with a wrist tattoo, describing a design whose lettering spells his name in stars. It was one more way of turning grief into something she can carry with grace.
Why it resonates
Iman's reflection lands because it names a quiet truth many parents know: sometimes caring for a child means postponing your own pain. By speaking about it now, years later, she offers a model of grief that is patient, honest, and ultimately hopeful, one that honors both her daughter and the man they lost.
