Who

A socialite and songwriter, Rich is best known as the ex-wife of financier Marc Rich.

Backstory

Denise Eisenberg grew up in a wealthy New England home: Her dad, a shoe manufacturer, was responsible for setting her up on a blind date with Marc Rich, the man who would become her husband. In 1966, after a six-month courtship, the couple married; Marc spent much of the 1970s amassing a fortune as a commodities broker as Denise tended to raising a family and pursuing a career as a songwriter. She's had a surprising amount of success in the music biz: Her work has been recorded by Diana Ross, Celine Dion, Marc Anthony, Aretha Franklin, and Mary J. Blige, and she's been nominated for three Grammys.

Drama

Rich didn't become a household name for her songwriting abilities—it was the saga concerning her husband that landed her in the papers. In 1983, Marc Rich was indicted on charges of tax evasion and illegally trading with Iran; Rich and his partner, who were in Switzerland at the time, never returned to the U.S. to face the charges and became fugitives for more than a decade and a half. That ended in 2001 when President Bill Clinton pardoned Rich—a move that, not coincidentally, followed a series of large donations by Denise to the Democratic party and the Clinton Presidential Library. Charges that the Riches had bribed Clinton immediately surfaced, leading to an international media circus and forcing Denise to testify before Congress.

Currently

These days Rich's primary focus is her non-profit foundation, which raises money for cancer research. (Her daughter, Gabrielle, died of the disease at 27.) Rich's Angel Ball, which is held in the fall and benefits her foundation, the G&P Charitable Foundation for Cancer Research, regularly attracts more than 1,000 people.

Personal

Denise and Marc divorced in 1996 and she walked away with an estimated $200 million as part of a settlement, ensuring that she'll be able to afford tanning beds and enormous diamonds for the rest of her days. She's since been connected to Danish fertility doctor Niels H. Lauersen, who later spent five years in prison for insurance fraud. In addition to the late Gabrielle, Rich has two other daughters, Ilona and Daniella. Rich lives in an Upper East Side triplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue and recently purchased a 6,000 square-foot yacht on which she plans to spend five months a year. The boat, called Lady Joy II, has an elevator, a grand piano, and an outdoor gym.

True story

At a lavishly tacky party at her apartment several years ago, Rich surprised even the most jaded New Yorkers when she had the terraces of her apartment flooded to turn them into temporary ice skating rinks—it was, after all, the dead of winter—and then hired professional figure skaters covered in gold body paint to pirouette across the frozen surfaces for the amusement of her guests, who were warm and toasty inside.