Taylor Armstrong broke down in tears on “ Entertainment Tonight” Tuesday in her first interview since the suicide of her financier husband.

“As I was laying in the street screaming, I realized that my little girl was there,” she said, choking back sobs, of the minutes following news of Russell Armstrong‘s death. “And I had to pull it together to get her out of there.”

“I just told her that daddy got sick and he died and that we could pick a star in the sky to be daddy and that she could talk to him,” she said.

The “ Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” cast member also detailed her allegedly abusive relationship with her estranged husband, who was found dead Aug. 15, saying he once “grabbed me by the neck and shoved me up against the wall and he said, ‘If you ever make my children a pizza without a vegetable again, I’ll kill you.’”

“He would grab me by one side of the hair on my head and bang the other side of my head against the car,” she added. “He would say to me, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to kill you one day.’”

“ET” showed photos of Taylor Armstrong with a black eye during the interview. But Russell Armstrong’s lawyer, Ronald Richards, shot back at the assumption that his former client inflicted that injury.

“At no time prior to Mr. Armstrong’s death did Taylor Armstrong file a police or medical report indicating she was the victim of domestic violence,” Richards said in a statement to ABCNews.com. “Specifically, the photos she sold to ‘ET’ are undated, unauthenticated, and lack any indicia of veracity to support the contention by her that my client ever caused injuries like the ones depicted in those hawked photos.’”