The rise and fall of Singapore music star and Playboy cover girl DJ Tenashar – jailed, freed, and back in trouble
- She rode the model-DJ craze, appearing scantily clad on magazine covers. Then she was jailed for drug offences. Freed, Tenashar vowed she had turned a corner
- But within weeks of leaving Changi Prison she was arrested twice in three days suspected of drug offences and criminal trespass, and apparently destitute
Singaporean DJ Tenashar once had it all. She was included on the DJ Magazine list of the world’s top 100 DJs and lived a jet-setting lifestyle as an Asian music star and model.
But after being arrested in 2015 for carrying drugs into Singapore, she skipped bail. She was eventually handed an 18-month jail sentence after returning to Singapore in 2018. After she was released in May, Tenashar announced in June that she planned to become an anti-drug ambassador, but has since been arrested twice, and reportedly again tested positive for drugs.
On July 5, Tenashar, 33, was found asleep on a lobby sofa in the Berjaya Waterfront Hotel in Johor Baharu, Malaysia. A manager at the hotel took her to a police station, where she failed a drug test and was arrested. Two days later, Tenashar was arrested in Singapore for criminal trespass and drug-related offences after reportedly being caught trying to break into a house on Singapore’s Edgware Road.
Born Debbie Valerie Tenashar Long, she started DJing around 2009 and eventually became the resident DJ at Avalon, a now-defunct nightclub in Marina Bay Sands. She would usually be scantily clad for her sexually charged performances, rode the wave of the “model DJ” craze and appeared on the covers of the Singapore and Malaysian editions of men’s magazine FHM in 2012.
The next year she graced the cover of the Thai edition of Playboy magazine in 2013 and was also ranked No 87 on DJ Magazine’s annual top 100 list. Then it all came crashing down.
