The American R&B star Chris Brown has been released without charge after being held overnight for questioning over a rape allegation in Paris, the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

A 25-year-old woman accused Brown, along with his bodyguard and a friend, of assaulting her in the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel last Tuesday night, a source close to the case said on condition of anonymity.

The Grammy award-winning singer, 29, was detained on Monday on suspicion of aggravated rape and a drug offence.

On Tuesday night, following his release, he posted on Instagram an image which read, “This B!tch lyin’”, with accompanying text: “I wanna make it perfectly clear … this is false and a whole lot of cap! (sic)”

The prosecutor’s office said an investigation was continuing, while Brown’s lawyer Raphael Chiche said his client “energetically” proclaimed his innocence and wanted to bring a defamation lawsuit.

The alleged victim told police she met Brown in a nightclub near the Champs Élysées with a group of other women. She then agreed to go back to the hotel, which is on the boutique-lined Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Brown, who has been attending shows in Paris during men’s fashion week, has been in repeated legal trouble since pleading guilty to assaulting his then girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. He was jailed for breaking his probation following the assault after he pleaded guilty to another assault charge filed by a man who said Brown had punched him after he tried to take a photo with the singer.

Brown eventually completed his probation in 2015. He described the Rihanna incident in a 2017 documentary, saying: “I really hit her, with a closed fist, I punched her … That’s going to haunt me for ever.”

In 2017, another former girlfriend, the actor and model Karrueche Tran, obtained a five-year restraining order against Brown after alleging he had made numerous violent threats in voicemails and text messages. “It came to a point where I felt like I needed to protect my safety,” Tran said.

Last May, Brown was sued for $17m (£13m) by an anonymous woman who alleged she was raped in his home, accusing Brown of assisting in the assault by telling her attacker to barricade the room in which it took place.

The lawsuit was described as a “shakedown” by Brown’s lawyer, who denied the claims on his behalf. In December, Brown was accused of trying to intimidate the woman after he requested to film her during an inspection of his home. The case continues.

Last July, Brown was arrested in Florida on a charge of battery. He was released on bail and there have yet to be any further developments in that case.

He is facing an arraignment in Los Angeles on 6 February for lacking a permit to own a pet monkey after he posted videos of his three-year-old daughter, Royalty, playing with the animal this month.

Though his fame has waned slightly in recent years, Brown remains one of the most successful R&B artists of the century, moving from pop songs including Run It and No Air to a harder-edged, trap-influenced sound on tracks such as Loyal.

Two of his eight albums have reached No 1 in the US, and all charted in the Top 10. Brown’s most recent album was the 45-track Heartbreak on a Full Moon, which reached No 3 in October 2017. He won a Grammy award in 2011 for best R&B album, for FAME, and has had 17 nominations in total.