Denise Rich: Stepping From High Society Into World of Power Politics

For weeks she’s been portrayed as a high-flying Manhattan hostess, a songwriting society maven who played only a secondary role in the controversial pardon of her ex-husband, fugitive financier Marc Rich.

But in fact Denise Rich made crucial decisions in the elaborate lobbying campaign, contacting President Clinton on three occasions and vetoing a plan to seek support from Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to memorandums and e-mails generated by her husband’s legal team.

Rich’s involvement in the pardon is clearly greater than investigators originally thought, and they are now trying to determine if she funneled any money to Clinton from her billionaire former husband. It’s been a stunning blow to a wealthy woman who came to New York eight years ago with no political background and rapidly reinvented herself as a Democratic Party fund-raiser. A fixture in the city’s high society, she had enjoyed years of good publicity.

“I think she’s been devastated by all of this,” said Bobby Zarem, a longtime friend and public relations spokesman. “Denise is just the kindest, most generous person. I can’t believe she’s done anything wrong.”

Following the Money Trail

For nearly a decade, the most urgent question surrounding Denise Rich was how to wangle an invitation to one of her soirees. But these days, federal investigators want to know if the Grammy-nominated songwriter’s $450,000 contribution to Clinton’s presidential library--or any of the nearly $1.4 million she’s given to Democratic causes--triggered his pardon of her former husband.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has said it would subpoena her bank records, while House and Senate committees pursue similar leads. Rich declined to testify before the House Committee on Government Reform last week, citing her right under the 5th Amendment not to incriminate herself. Through her attorney Martin Pollner, she has insisted she “has done nothing wrong with regard to the pardon and knows of no wrongdoing by others in the requesting and granting of the pardon.”

Indeed, friends portray her as a decent person who supported the campaign to pardon her ex-husband on strictly humanitarian grounds. Zarem and others believe that she is hardly the type to play Machiavellian political games.

A Key Player in Lobbying Drive

But based on a review of documents released last week by the House Government Reform Committee, Denise Rich emerges as a crucial member of the lobbying team. Stressing that the pardon meant a lot to her personally, she wrote Clinton twice. Determined to focus his attention on the matter, she approached him at a Dec. 20 White House Christmas party, pressing her case yet again.

When her ex-husband’s lawyers broached the idea of lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton for support, Rich, 57, vetoed the strategy, saying it could backfire. When Robert Fink, Marc Rich’s New York attorney, wrote a memo outlining the pardon campaign that would unfold, he said that “maximizing the use of D.R. and her friends” was a priority.

On Jan. 22, two days after the pardon was issued, Fink told his colleagues in an e-mail that he had an obligation to “tell the true story” of the pardon campaign because “the impression is that this was all paid for by DR [Denise Rich]. . . . It will come out and it does not pay to hide what happened. People will only think the worse [sic].”

Yet questions keep coming: Why would Denise Rich mount such an effort for a man who had cheated on her? Rich has declined comment, noting through intermediaries that she sought the pardon for her two daughters, who hadn’t seen their father in the United States since he fled prosecution for oil price rigging and tax evasion in 1983. When her third daughter died in 1996 of leukemia, Rich was reportedly distraught that her ex-husband couldn’t attend the U.S. funeral because of his fugitive status.

Others take a dim view of Denise Rich’s motives and actions, saying they show how massive contributions can distort the political process. But either way, Rich’s determination to win the pardon was just one more example of the drive she showed in climbing to the top of the Big Apple’s society. “Denise’s story is very much like that of many people who come to New York with money and make a splash,” says David Patrick Columbia, a high-society chronicler. “But a key difference is that she’s unpretentious.

“For all her money, Denise is neither Newport, R.I., or Newport Beach, Calif. She’s like one of those relaxed and glitzy women you meet in Bel-Air or Holmby Hills. She’ll go to Monaco, but she’ll also go to Vegas.”

Career Soared After Her Marriage

Denise Eisenberg was born in Worcester, Mass., to Holocaust survivors who ran a shoe factory, and she never lacked for money. A bright student, she developed a talent for music while attending Boston University. Her father introduced her to Marc Rich, a promising oil commodities trader, and the two were married in 1966. His career took off, and they spent many years living abroad. But the troubles began in 1983, when he was indicted on charges of fraud, racketeering and tax evasion. The family was then living in Switzerland, and he refused to come home to face prosecutors.

Denise Rich’s marriage soon unraveled, when she learned that her husband was going to leave her for a younger woman. In a bitter interview with a Swiss magazine, she accused him of “destroying our family.” Flush with millions from the divorce settlement, Rich packed up her guitar and three daughters and moved to Manhattan.

“Denise was never a political person,” said Zarem. “When she was first breaking into the New York scene . . . I was happy to help her. I was the one who [encouraged] her to get involved [with politics]. She’s always had a very good heart, and people were attracted to her.”

In her 25,000-square-foot penthouse overlooking Central Park, Rich drew such celebrities as Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Robert De Niro. Michael Douglas proposed to Catherine Zeta-Jones after both spent New Year’s Eve 1999 partying at Rich’s opulent home in Aspen, Colo. As her notoriety grew, so did her political contributions.

In one of the darkest days of his presidency, Clinton turned to her for moral and financial support. Several days after the Starr report was issued in 1998, he flew to New York and dined with a host of Democratic dignitaries in her home. She helped raise more than $3 million for the Democratic National Committee at that event.

Friends say that Rich is easygoing and down to earth, and she’s most at home with musicians. During the last 15 years, she’s penned a string of hit songs for Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Mary J. Blige, Celine Dion and many others. One of her better-known successes is a duet by Franklin and Blige, “Don’t Waste Your Time.” She also wrote a No. 1 R&B; hit in 1986 called “Frankie” for Sister Sledge.

Writing songs, she’s said, was good therapy after her divorce. But it also strengthened her when Rich’s mother, sister and best friend all died of cancer. She was especially devastated when her daughter, Gabrielle, in her late 20s, died of leukemia. Keeping a deathbed promise to her child, she formed a foundation for cancer research. Now, facing another test, Rich “is handling the stress as well as you’d expect,” said Pollner.

“I think she’s astounded at everything that’s happened,” added Zarem. “She never expected this to descend on her.”