[citation needed] On her return to England, she became a fixture of London's bohemian youth culture, "the Bright Young Things", and socialised with such celebrities as Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton at the group's fancy dress parties.

[5] Following a reported miscarriage, she became chemically dependent on morphine, which led to her lifelong battle with drug addiction and made her one of the most talked-about young women in London.

The following decades saw her in and out of various courts, receiving sentences of up to six months in prison for possession of dangerous drugs, obtaining goods on false pretences, and theft of services (refusing to pay taxi drivers).

In the mid-1950s, the young artist Michael Wishart, sitting in a restaurant, watched her take a syringe of heroin from her handbag and fill it "from a vase of flowers on the table".

[10][11][12] Neville Phillips reported “the role of the Princess was played by the always newsworthy, once ravishing now ravaged, oft arrested society blonde lesbian drug addict, Brenda Dean Paul, who, owing to her addiction, was not able to do all the performances, giving the ones she could manage the extra frisson of wondering if the police might burst in at any moment and make an on-stage arrest.”[9] In 1957, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Rome with a parcel of cocaine in her possession.