Britney Spears has revealed she lost her virginity long before her romance with Justin Timberlake – flying in the face of her previous claims.

During the early years of her stardom, Britney upheld a carefully constructed media image of a traditional Texas girl waiting until marriage to have sex.

The façade was blown to smithereens after her split from Justin, who vindictively blabbed in public that he and Britney had been intimate.

In response, Britney claimed to W magazine that Justin, whom she started dating when she was 17, was the ‘one person’ she had slept with in ‘my whole life.’

Now, however, in a bombshell passage of her upcoming memoir obtained by Us Weekly, Britney has told the true story of her first time.

She revealed in her new book The Woman In Me that she was just 14 years old when she lost her virginity to a 17-year-old best pal of her elder brother Bryan Spears.

Once she became famous her sex life, or alleged lack thereof, was under a blistering glare of media scrutiny from her teen years well into her adulthood.

She faced slings and arrows from American parents who were furious about her raunchy performances, but she maintained that she was a virgin in real life.

Yet after she and Justin broke up in 2002, he publicly accused her of infidelity and shattered her virginal public persona.

During an interview with Justin, Barbara Walters read him a quote from Britney stipulating: ‘Good morals mean waiting to have sex until after you’ve been married.’

Justin concurred, and when Barbara asked: ‘Did you and she live up to this during your relationship?’ he smirked and laughed while sarcastically saying: ‘Sure.’

Britney retorted in W that Justin was the only man she had ever been with, and that she had waited until ‘two years into my relationship’ to go to bed with him.

‘And I thought he was The One. But I was wrong. I didn’t think he was gonna go on Barbara Walters and sell me out,’ she said pointedly.

However in 2008, Britney’s mother Lynne Spears released a memoir announcing that her Pop Princess daughter had begun having sex at age 14.

She claimed Britney’s first time was with an 18-year-old high school football player – one she encouraged Britney to date in order to enhance her popularity at school.

Over the past few weeks, in the run-up to Britney’s own book release, a string of stunning revelations have been surfacing from its pages.

One of her claims that recently went public is that Justin slept with ‘six or seven’ women in the immediate aftermath of their split.

Britney and Justin dated from 1999-2002 after they both became child stars when they starred in the Mickey Mouse Club back in the early 1990s.

In an excerpt obtained by TIME, Britney said Justin moved on fast and addressed her short-lived fling with Colin Farrell in the wake of their split.

Britney said she was devastated after Justin bedded ‘six or seven girls’ in the weeks after they broke up.

She said: ‘He was a girl’s dream. I was in love with him.’

After Justin’s relationship with Britney, he embarked on a romance with Cameron Diaz.

They met a year after his split from Britney when she presented him with Best Burp at the 2003 Kids Choice Awards.

She was 31 while he was 22 at the time. They went on to date for nearly four years.

MailOnline has contacted Britney and Justin’s representatives for comment.

Britney said she wasn’t over her ex-boyfriend when she met Colin, 47, through a ‘club promoter friend’ before visiting him on the set of his 2003 movie S.W.A.T.

They had a short-lived fling which she said was passionate and likened it to a street fight.

‘As I had before when I’d felt too attached to a man, I tried to convince myself in every way that it was not a big deal, that we were just having fun, that in this case, I was vulnerable because I wasn’t over Justin yet,’ Britney wrote.

‘For a brief moment in time, I did think there could be something there. The disappointments in my romantic life were just one part of how isolated I became. I felt so awkward all the time.’

Britney candidly goes into detail about her failed romance with Justin in her tell-all memoir and the ‘agonising’ decision of having an abortion after falling pregnant.

The singer said she fell pregnant by Justin in 2000 but had an abortion because the N*Sync star ‘didn’t want to be a father.’

The star claimed while she wanted the baby and ‘dreamed of having a family’ with Timberlake, he ‘wasn’t ready’ for the responsibilities of parenthood and thought the pair were too young.

She writes in an excerpt obtained by People: ‘It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.

‘He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby.

‘I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.’

Spears would later welcome sons Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden, 17 with Kevin Federline while Timberlake shares sons Silas, eight and Phineas, two with wife Jessica Biel.

On July 24, The Sun claimed both Timberlake and Colin’s attorneys threatened legal action, which wound up delaying Britney’s book for four months.

‘Lawyers demanded to see her book in advance and were adamant that some of the revelations were removed,’ a source told the outlet.

‘There are still plenty of gobsmacking tales but Justin and Colin were conscious about what could be said about them. The legal process meant the publication was held up by four months as discussions went back and forth about what could be included. But that has finally now been settled and her autobiography is all ready to go.’

The Woman In Me – which has already topped Amazon’s Best Seller’s list – will not include any details about Spears’ split from third husband Sam Asghari, who filed for divorce from her on August 16 after 14 months of marriage.

DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Timberlake, Spears and Simon & Schuster for comment.