In this paper we consider the following higher-order nonlinear difference equation $$ x_{n}=\alpha x_{n-k}+\frac{\delta x_{n-k}x_{n-\left( k+l\right) }}{\beta x_{n-\left( k+l\right) }+\gamma x_{n-l}},\ n\in \mathbb{N} _{0}, $$ where $k$ and $l$ are fixed natural numbers, and the parameters $\alpha $, $ \beta $, $\gamma $, $\delta $ and the initial values $x_{-i}$, $i=\overline{ 1,k+l}$, are real numbers such that $\beta ^{2}+\gamma ^{2}\neq 0$. We solve the above-mentioned equation in closed form and considerably extend some results in the literature. We also determine the asymptotic behavior of solutions and the forbidden set of the initial values using the obtained formulae for the case $l=1$.