A model nicknamed the Russian Rapunzel for her flowing hair, plunged to her death at the weekend from her home in a tower in New York.

Ruslana Korshunova, 20, a cover girl for French Elle and Russian Vogue, fell from her ninth-floor flat in the Manhattan financial district on Saturday. Police said they were investigating her death as possible suicide.

There were no signs of a struggle in the flat in which she had lived for two months, but a hole had been ripped in the construction netting that covered the balcony from which she apparently fell.

The model was wearing blue jeans and a purple tank top, but no shoes. Ms Korshunova, born in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, found fame after a model booker saw her in an article in an in-flight magazine about the German club in her home town of Almaty.

“I saw her by chance and she looked like something out of a fairytale. We had to find her and we searched high and low until we did.” Debbie Jones, a senior booker at Models 1, told British Vogue three years ago. “She's really incredible, with feline features and timeless beauty.”

The 5ft 9in model became known as “The Long Hair Goddess” for her locks, which she did not cut until she was 15.

The beauty, then 17, was hailed as “fashion's muse of the moment” by The Sunday Times, and British Vogue called her “a face to be excited about”. She strutted the catwalk for such designers as Jill Stuart and Betsey Johnson, and modelled in campaigns for Paul Smith, Moschino, Marc Jacobs, DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior.

“She came in this morning, she smiled, no sense of depression,” Mahmoud Nakeeb, the doorman at her 12-storey building said. “She was a very sweet girl, always smiling, never depressed-looking.”

On a social networking site Ms Korshunova wrote: “My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high.” But in January, she wrote: “I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?”

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