Jesy Nelson signed a record deal with Polydor just five months after leaving Little Mix.
The star rocketed to fame alongside Little Mix's Jade Thirlwall as well as pregnant bandmates Perrie Edwards and Leigh Anne Pinnock when they won The X Factor.
Last year, the singer quit the girl group as she said the band had taken a toll on her mental health.
After lots of glimpses into recording studios, Jesy announced she was making her comeback as a solo artist just five months later.
She told her 7.9million followers: "So excited to announce that I’ve signed my first ever solo record deal with @polydorrecords @universalmusicgroup.
"This is such a pinch me moment. I cannot wait for you guys to hear what I’ve been working on."
Ahead of the announcement, it was reported Jesy and Little Mix "cut financial ties" before the group's tour.
The trio apparently have been set to make five million from the gigs and if Jesy remained a director in the business she too would have repeated the rewards.
Jesy skipped the BRITs but she still won a gong with Little Mix as they went down in history as the first girl group to win the Best British Band.
In a kind gesture, the girls paid a sweet tribute to the star who left the band.
Leigh-Anne said on stage: "We have been together for 10 years it's been the best years of our life, we have had so much fun.
"We want to start by thanking out incredible fans. Of course Jesy. It's not easy being a female in the UK pop industry.
"We've seen misogyny, white male dominance and lack of diversity."
Jesy also took to Instagram to show support for her former band mates and congratulated them on the win.
Recently, the songstress revealed for the first time she was at "breaking point" on a video shoot for Sweet Melody.
She told Cosmopolitan : “We’d been in lockdown, and it was the first time I could have a break and be at home around people that I love. It was the happiest I’d ever felt and I didn’t realise that until I went back to work. I immediately became a different person.
“I had anxiety. Whenever we have a music video I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to try and lose weight. I have a fear of looking back on the camera. If I don’t like what I see, I find it so hard to be in front of the camera and feel amazing and perform.
“I’d been in lockdown, and I’d put on a bit of weight but I didn’t care. And they said, ‘you’ve got a music video in a couple of weeks’ and I just panicked. I went on this extreme diet, with bloody shakes, and tried to eat as little as possible. On the day of the Sweet Melody video I had a panic attack on set because I didn’t look how I wanted to look and I found it so hard to just be happy and enjoy myself.
“There’s a scene in Sweet Melody I’m not in because that’s when I had a panic attack and broke down. I was like, ‘I just want to go home.’”
*If you're struggling and need to talk, the Samaritans operate a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email jo@samaritans.org or visit their site to find your local branch
