What Lily-Rose Depp Has Said About Her Sexuality

Lily-Rose Depp likes to keep her love life to herself, but that hasn't stopped her dating history from being dissected. While Depp has been linked to French rapper Yassine Stein, Austin Butler, Timothée Chalamet, and Ash Stymest, "The Idol" star has only ever acknowledged one of her relationships. In May, Depp confirmed she was dating 070 Shake, whose real name is Danielle Balbuena. "4 MONTHS WITH MY CRUSH," she wrote on her Instagram Stories over a photo of the two kissing.

Depp's post came three months after she and Shake were first seen in public together. In late February, Depp and Shake arrived at Paris Fashion Week arm-in-arm, fueling speculation that they were more than friends. Since then, Depp has celebrated her relationship with the musician quite a few times on social media, a clear break from her previous approach to dating. "Happy birthday. Love of my life," the Chanel ambassador shared on her Stories in June, pairing the words with a mirror selfie of them together.

On August 28, Depp offered a glimpse of their relationship on her Instagram profile feed, the only time she's done so. "Me and my prince charming," she captioned the carousel featuring intimate photos of her with Shake. While the relationship has been celebrated by the LGBTQ+ community, Shake prefers not to use any specific terminology. "I don't really identify myself as queer or gay or anything. I just like girls," she told Pitchfork in 2018. Depp takes a similar approach to her own sexuality.

In August 2015, Lily-Rose Depp made headlines for taking part in iO Tillett Wright's "Self Evident Truths" project, a campaign featuring 10,000 people across the U.S. who don't identify entirely as straight. "She decided she wanted to be in @selfevidentproject because she falls somewhere on the vast spectrum, and I couldn't be happier to welcome her to the family," Tillett Wright wrote on a since-deleted Instagram post. To many, Lily-Rose's decision to be featured was her way of coming out.

But that's not how she saw it. "That was really misconstrued, that whole thing ... I was literally doing it just to say that you don't have to label your sexuality," she told Nylon in February 2016. Lily-Rose explained that labeling her preference felt limiting and even dishonest, considering she couldn't know who she might be attracted to in the future. "If you like something one day then you do, and if you like something else the other day, it's whatever," she said. "You don't have to label yourself, because it's not set in stone."

When the public labeled her as gay for her choice, it accomplished exactly the opposite of what she was trying to do. "It's so fluid," she explained. The previous November, her father, Johnny Depp, praised her for not being afraid to embrace that side of herself. "The only thing you can do as a parent is to offer support. And I do," he told the Daily Mail.

Lily-Rose Depp wants to carve out her own path. As someone who grew up in the spotlight, the model and actor has always had her life defined for her in the media. To regain a sense of control, she avoids discussing Johnny Depp or any of her past relationships in interviews. "I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life, whether that's my family members or my boyfriends," she told Elle in 2022.

Even if she has gone public with her relationship with 070 Shake, Lily-Rose hasn't discussed the relationship publicly. Her social media mentions of the rapper may indicate she wants to do it on her own terms. Lily-Rose's wish for privacy stems from childhood, which was passed onto her by her father and mother, Vanessa Paradis. "Growing up in a family like I did, it was always something that was — I always learned the importance of privacy," she said on "The Drew Barrymore Show" in 2021.

Lily-Rose ranks her privacy at the very top of her priorities, and she is not afraid of the consequences her penchant for sharing too little might have. "I would rather people think I'm boring than people know too much about my life. I'll be boring any day," she told The Face in 2019. Truth be told, Depp's lip-tightness may have had the opposite effect on her career, which continues to rise.