this is a cool effect - having trouble putting this into words - but the effect injects a "viewer experience" into the image. As if the girl half of the image is seen differently by the particular person who saw her as she walked by, charging it with the emotions that go with that. I wonder, did you choose your composition deliberately, to have the street lamp bisecting the image, to allow for the modification later?
For me some of the mystery of the original is missing, probably because you eliminated the foggy separation by a crisp vertical line.
Perhaps just bringing to light the right side with the woman and leaving the rest untouched...
I am always in two minds upon modifying an image