Rihanna is speaking out publicly for the first time about what happened that unforgettable night in February between her and ex-boyfriend Chris Brown.

“This happened to me. … It can happen to anyone,” she tells ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer in a three-part interview airing Thursday and Friday morning on “Good Morning America,” and culminating on Friday’s “20/20.”

She also reveals that Brown, who plead guilty to assaulting her, once had her heart. “He was definitely my first big love.”

The media attention from the incident turned the 21-year-old pop star into a household name overnight. “I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears,” she tells Glamour magazine in the December issue. “That was the level of media chaos that happened the next day. It was like, ‘What, there are helicopters circling my house? There are 100 people in my cul-de-sac? What do you mean, I can’t go back home?'”

As for the infamous photo of a battered and bruised Rihanna that leaked online, she says, “It was humiliating; that is not a photo you would show to anybody. I felt completely taken advantage of. I felt like people were making it into a fun topic on the Internet, and it’s my life. I was disappointed, especially when I found out the photo was [supposedly leaked by] two women.”

Rihanna’s fourth album Rated R, due November 23, has already cracked the top 10 on iTunes albums chart based on pre-sales alone. Her single “Russian Roulette” is currently the No. 9 most-downloaded song in the digital store.