Dancing With The Stars has built an entire universe around the glittery promise of one simple question: Can a celebrity actually dance? Season after season, the ballroom has welcomed pop stars, athletes, and reality royalty, all chasing the coveted Mirrorball Trophy. Now, with Season 35 confirmed for fall 2026, the show has gone full transatlantic with its latest casting announcement, and the name generating the biggest buzz is Maura Higgins, landing with the kind of Irish charm that is very hard to ignore.

While the ballroom buzzes with new names, Maura Higgins brings a résumé so layered it practically deserves its own season.

Born November 25, 1990, in Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, Maura Higgins is a 35-year-old television personality, model, and presenter who first detonated onto global screens as a contestant on Love Island UK's fifth series in 2019. Her unapologetic wit and now-legendary catchphrases turned her from a surprise villa entry into one of the most recognizable names to ever come out of the ITV2 franchise, and the fan mail has not stopped since.

Standing at 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), Higgins has leveraged her reality fame into a high-profile modeling career that has seen her grace red carpets at the British Fashion Awards and the TIME 100 Gala. Her American chapter, solidified through her role as social media host and Aftersun presenter for Love Island USA, has proven she is not just a UK export but a genuine transatlantic entertainment force, a distinction very few reality stars ever actually achieve.

As impressive as her current résumé reads, the road to glamour began in a small Irish town with scissors, a salon chair, and zero interest in the spotlight.

Before the villa, before the red carpets, there was a hairdressing salon in Athlone. Maura Higgins left school at 16 and spent nearly a decade cutting hair and building a craft far removed from television cameras. During that time, she quietly pivoted into modeling, eventually landing grid girl assignments for Formula 1 and high-energy promotional work as a Monster Energy girl. In 2017, she appeared in the visual campaign for Liam Payne's hit single 'Get Low,' a credit that reads almost surreal in hindsight.

Her career trajectory shifted dramatically in 2018 when a Monster Energy video of her drifting a car in Abu Dhabi, intended to inspire women in the region to take the wheel, went viral. Around the same time, she was working as a ring girl for professional boxing bouts featuring Anthony Joshua. These live-audience, high-pressure environments gave her a masterclass in performance that no drama school could replicate, and effectively wrote the blueprint for what came next.

As of now, Higgins has been announced as one of the first celebrity contestants for Season 35 of Dancing With The Stars (US), set to premiere in fall 2026, and this is not exactly her first rodeo on a competitive performance floor, having finished sixth on the UK's Dancing on Ice in 2020. Her runner-up finish on The Traitors US Season 4, marked by Rob Rausch’s last-minute betrayal, has boosted interest in her finally winning. Meanwhile, Ciara Miller draws attention to the rumors linking Jen Affleck to Ben Affleck.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Dissect Challenges in Filming Netflix Action Movies on Joe Rogan Show

While her American career hits its highest gear yet, none of it makes sense without understanding the Longford roots that built the woman underneath the sequins.

Maura Higgins was born to Sharon and Seamus Higgins in Ballymahon, County Longford, a small, tight-knit Irish community where everybody knows everybody and glamour was decidedly not on the local agenda. She grew up in a lively household with two sisters and one brother, and her mother, Sharon, has made enough appearances on television and social media alongside Maura that fans regularly note their shared no-nonsense Irish wit and near-identical bone structure.

Despite the high-fashion lifestyle and Hollywood adjacency, Maura Higgins has spoken candidly in 2026 interviews about her parents' divorce and the way growing up in a modest rural setting forged her drive. That grounded, family-first foundation has not dissolved with distance; she regularly returns to Longford, frequently flies her mother out to Los Angeles for major events, and credits her family as her core support system in an industry that chews through people at a remarkable rate.

Her social media presence occasionally offers a glimpse behind the persona, Christmas back in County Longford, siblings on the sofa, the ordinary warmth of a family that has watched its daughter go from local hairdresser to TIME 100 Gala co-host with equal parts pride and mild disbelief. It is this specific duality, the global star who still calls Mam after a big night, that her audience finds genuinely compelling and impossible to manufacture.

While her roots remain firmly in Longford, her bank balance tells a story that is unmistakably Hollywood, and it is only getting started.

As of early 2026, Maura Higgins' net worth sits between an estimated $3.5 million and $4.3 million, and it was built on considerably more than appearance fees. Her primary revenue pillars are her Love Island: Aftersun hosting contract and her high-profile participation in The Traitors US, which reportedly delivered a multi-million dollar career boost in the American market. These are not one-off paychecks; they are the foundation of a sustainable media business.

Her company, The Flutter Effect Ltd, manages her commercial portfolio, which includes the False Flutters lash line stocked at Primark. Her 2025–2026 ambassadorship with MAC Cosmetics is considered one of the most lucrative beauty deals attached to a reality star in recent memory. Add to that the sponsored content rates commanded by a 4.3-million-follower Instagram platform, servicing global brands like Boohoo and Bellamianta, and the picture that emerges is not a celebrity with a side hustle but a genuine business operation with serious infrastructure.

Financial analysts watching her trajectory predict her net worth could cross the $6 million mark before the end of 2026, driven by her Dancing with the Stars role and whispers of a seven-figure US-based cosmetics deal. She has also reportedly begun eyeing property in the Hollywood Hills, a move that signals not a visit, but a full relocation of ambition. One thing is increasingly clear: the girl from Ballymahon is not chasing the American dream anymore; she is quietly becoming it.

Cameron Crovetti's Parents, Family and Everything You Need to Know About 'The Boys' Season 5's Teenage Sensation

What are your thoughts on Maura Higgins joining Dancing With The Stars season 35? Do you think she has what it takes to win the Mirrorball Trophy? Let us know in the comments.