The central question in the always interesting life of Denise Rich, the pop songwriter and fabulous
Fifth Avenue party girl who has given more than $1 million to the Clintons and Democratic causes,
is this: Was her largess in the interest of buying a presidential pardon for her ex-husband and the
father of her children, the fugitive billionaire Marc Rich? Or were her motives more subtle and complex?

Geraldo Rivera, the celebrity television journalist who is a close friend of Ms. Rich's through her former
boyfriend, the fertility doctor Niels H. Lauersen (who helped Mr. Rivera and his wife conceive but who
has since been convicted of insurance fraud, another long story), does not take the view that Ms. Rich
and her ex-husband were "manipulating this entire saga" to secure a pardon.

"Maybe that was their deep, dark motivation," Mr. Rivera said, "but I certainly didn't see it."

Ms. Rich, he said, had other goals. "The people who think she wants to be a kind of Pamela Harriman
person are not off the mark," he said, referring to the ambassador to France and Democratic Party
fund-raiser extraordinaire of the 1980's.

"She wanted a salon, she wanted a Gertrude Stein, Paris kind of scene, she wanted to watch the
parade of contemporary popular cultural life march through her living room," he said.

Ms. Rich, he added, is unpretentious, decent, trusting — "kind of like Daisy Mae in the Big Apple."

Ms. Rich is unable to speak for herself right now — although her recently hired lawyer, Martin R.
Pollner, says she would very much like to — because of her new team of advisers, led by the city's
No. 1 public relations man, Howard J. Rubenstein, who have told her to remain silent as Congress
prepares for hearings next week into the last-minute pardons by President Clinton.

Her advisers, meanwhile, say that although Ms. Rich did indeed ask Mr. Clinton to pardon her former husband,
in a letter and then at a party at the White House in December, she did nothing wrong. "She hasn't been
charged with anything, nor do we expect her to be charged with anything," Mr. Pollner said.

Ms. Rich's many friends and party guests concur that the only crime she committed was that of naïveté.
"I don't think what she did, which is exploiting her relationship with the Clintons, is at all unusual," said
David Patrick Columbia, the editor of Quest, the magazine that assiduously chronicles New York society.

Ms. Rich's critics disagree. "A seven-figure soft-money donor directly lobbying the president for a
controversial and indefensible pardon is at bare minimum a huge appearance problem, and potentially
far worse," said Fred Wertheimer, one of the country's experts on campaign finance. Senator Arlen
Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plans to
call Ms. Rich to testify, added yesterday that she would be an important witness who could help
explain whether there was a quid pro quo for the pardon, and whether her husband's riches financed
her Democratic contributions.

"I don't know the source of the money," Mr. Specter said, "but I think it's a fair question."

The 57-year-old Denise Rich began her ascension into the world of New York show business, politics
and celebrity only in 1993, the year she settled back in the city with her three daughters after leaving
her husband in Switzerland, where he had fled from United States prosecutors on tax evasion charges
a decade before. The marriage in exile had not gone well. Mr. Rich had treated her badly, Ms. Rich
told many friends, and had another woman on the side. Ms. Rich had hoped, incorrectly, that the other
woman was just a temporary distraction.

"I fought so hard," Ms. Rich told New York magazine in 1999. "But she was very aggressive, you know?"

The couple had been married since 1966. Mr. Rich was a Belgian-born dropout of New York
University who was making a fortune as a commodities broker in New York; Ms. Rich, the former
Denise Eisenberg, was the daughter of Holocaust survivors who had fled Germany for Worcester,
Mass. Over the years, her father made millions in a shoe factory while his musically inclined daughter
went on to Boston University, where she taught herself to play the guitar.

It was the beginning of a songwriting career that would grow in frustrating fits throughout the years of
her marriage and motherhood — Ms. Rich had written the hit "Frankie" for Sister Sledge in 1985 —
but which she was determined to pursue in aggressive earnest once she set up her new life in New
York. To that aim, she quickly hired the old war horse of a public relations man, Bobby Zarem, who if
he was no longer in Mr. Rubenstein's firmament was still brilliantly connected with a show business crowd.

"She was told that Bobby Zarem would be terrific for her career," said Marty Richards, the Broadway
producer, who is one of Ms. Rich's closest friends. "And Bobby got her into all the columns. She came
here knowing absolutely no one."

She did, however, have money, although how much is a matter of conjecture. Ms. Rich had demanded
$500 million in her divorce, but "that doesn't mean that she got it," Mr. Richards said. Ms. Rich has
told him, he said, "that `I wish I got one-third of what they told everybody I got.' " Mr. Richards also
said that Ms. Rich recently told him that her father has warned her that "if I continue living like this, I'm
going to be broke."

In any case, early on in her return to New York Ms. Rich met Kathy Sloane, the Clinton-friendly
Brown Harris Stevens broker who helped the president and first lady find their houses in Chappaqua
and Washington. Mr. Zarem says he introduced Ms. Sloane to Ms. Rich; Ms. Sloane said that she
could not remember exactly how she met Ms. Rich, but that Mr. Zarem "certainly was an advocate for her."

Either way, Ms. Sloane said yesterday that it was sometime in 1993 that she introduced President
Clinton to Ms. Rich. "She was in the middle of trying to reconstitute her life in America," Ms. Sloane said.

Ms. Rich quickly displayed a fondness for sequins and certain direct charm. (A media executive who
went to see her about a charity event says he was greeted with: "God, you're cute and funny. Are you
single? I could marry you.")

Ms. Rich also began contributing to the Democratic Party, working hard on writing songs and holding
blowout parties in her apartment. "They used to look like the D-train at rush hour," Mr. Richards said.
"It was a very, very eclectic group. You'd see Barbara Walters and six kids who were part of a rap
group and then people she grew up with. But it always ended up with people who were recording her
songs getting up and singing. And she'd try to get anyone there to listen to them. That's how she was
promoting her music."

Whatever it was, it was working. In 1995, at a party at Ms. Rich's, Bette Midler heard her song "Love
Is on the Way," loved it and made it the theme song for her movie "The First Wives Club."

Ms. Rich, whose songs have since been nominated for both Grammys and Oscars, has also written for
Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle. Jimmy Hester, the vice president and general manager
of Denise Rich Songs, said this week that Ms. Rich always worked with co-writers, who did the actual
tracks. "Denise is a lyricist and melody person," he said. "She's not a musician — never claimed to be
one, never tried to be one."

The songs and the parties continued until 1996, when Ms. Rich's middle daughter, Gabrielle, died of
leukemia at the age of 27. New York magazine reported that on one of the last days that her daughter
was conscious, Ms. Rich had a string quartet play Tchaikovsky outside her hospital room. Gabrielle
died a few days later in her mother's arms.

To fight her grief, Ms. Rich threw herself into creating the G & P Charitable Foundation — the G is for
Gabrielle and the P is for her daughter's husband, Philip — to finance cancer research. The foundation reports
that is has so far raised $7 million, first from a gala in 1998 and then from a celebrity-packed Angel Ball at
the Marriott Marquis this past November, both attended by her friend the president. He was always grateful,
his fund-raisers said, for Ms. Rich's loyalty during the bleakest hours of his White House.

The president, after all, made his first public appearance after the Starr Report was released in
September 1998 at Ms. Rich's apartment for a fund-raising lunch, which raised close to $3 million.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore were there, too. Steve Grossman,
who was then chairman of the Democratic National Committee and who is now running for governor
of Massachusetts (Ms. Rich has already made a contribution to his campaign), said this week, "It was
the only time I can recall in my two years as chairman of the D.N.C. when all four principals came
together in a place that was not Washington or the White House." Ms. Rich, he added, "was always
there when we needed her."

These days, Ms. Rich's friends describe her as "beleaguered" and "bewildered," nothing more than a
devoted mother who asked the president to pardon her former husband only because her daughters
were pressuring her.

"They wanted their father home, from what she tells me," Mr. Richards said. "She said to me, `Marty,
look, I haven't said three words to the man in years and years and years.' " But her daughters, he said,
kept saying "I wish Daddy was here, I wish Daddy was here."

So Ms. Rich wrote the letter to the president, Mr. Richards said. "I don't think she understood the
ramifications," he said. "She wrote that letter to him, like he was a friend. That's the truth. You've got to
know Denise to know it. For a bright lady, she's just very, very naïve."

The hearings in Congress begin next Wednesday.