Her special brand of spacey spirituality didn't help much. At parties, she would talk about channeling her dead relatives in the shower. Or how her psychic helped her pick out the perfect plastic surgeon. Then there was the matter of her wardrobe. "Sausage casing" is how one society wag describes Denise's ensembles, which tend to be long on cleavage and short on length. Marty Richards remembers advising Denise, "You know, it wouldn't hurt to wear your skirts a little longer." ("When I was married to my husband," Denise says by way of explanation, "he made me dress like a nun.")

As Rich began to shimmy her way into Democratic politics, the sniping got even worse: One way or another, cynics declared, she was seeing that Marc Rich's money went to the government. This is the only swipe that makes Denise bristle. "It's mine," she says firmly. But they underestimated Denise, who was busy disarming even her staunchest critics with her gushy goodwill. Everyone has a story about the first time he or she met Denise -- a story that usually begins with eyes rolling and inevitably ends with "and we became instant friends."

"She's like a little baby, very vulnerable," says her friend Patti LaBelle. "She's a lady who has so much wealth, but you wouldn't think she had a dollar." "I'm telling you, there isn't a mean bone in this woman's body," says her pal Star Jones, who claims that she would "drive the Bronco for Denise."

"The first time I met her, I was having dinner in St. Barts with Clive Davis, and she came over to the table," says Richards. "I thought she was one of Clive's performers. She was very showy, very bubbly, very up." Richards had just lost his docking space for the annual New Year's Eve extravaganza he throws on his yacht, and Denise offered a deal: "If I give you my docking space, can I come to the party?" Richards wondered: Who is this chick?

"I knew she was a songwriter, so I thought she was a broke songwriter," says another of her closest friends, Michele Laurent-Rella, who met her in 1991, when both had just arrived in New York, and who is now development director of Denise's foundation. "Then I went to her home and was like, 'Who are you?' And she looked at me and said, 'You mean, you liked me for me?' "

None of this seemed to be in the cards for Denise during her last incarnation as a New Yorker, a stint that came to an abrupt end in 1983, when then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani went after Marc Rich, the billionaire commodities trader, for tax evasion, fraud, racketeering, and trading with the enemy (Iran). Rich bolted to Switzerland as Denise -- or so the story goes -- begged him not to leave. Friends say she was literally on her knees in the doorway, pulling at his pants legs, as he headed for the airport.

Denise herself downplays the drama: "Well, it's true that I didn't want him to leave. . . . I really believed that everything could work out." She thought maybe he could "settle or something." Instead, he settled into a palatial estate in Zug. Several months later, Denise and their three daughters joined him. To Denise, following the fugitive was a no-brainer. "It was like, 'It's my husband. I'm his wife. This is life,' you know? . . . I mean, of course there was anger there, too, but on the other hand, it was like, shit happens."