Born in Louisiana, Donna Rice lived in Tallahassee, Florida. until she was 13. Then her family moved to Irmo, South Carolina, a small suburb of Columbia. She was active in church missionary groups, sang in the church choir, participated in church youth activities, became a Girl Scout, worked summers in a pizza parlor and once had ambitions of becoming a doctor. She began making commercials when she was 13.
Donna attended the University of South Carolina, where she majored in biology and minored in business, became the head cheerleader and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She entered the Miss World Contest in 1980, and after becoming Miss South Carolina, moved to New York to make modeling and acting her career.
She was working as a sales representative for the Wyeth pharmaceutical company, calling on doctors and hospitals as the territory manager for Dade County when she met United States Senator
Gary Hart at a New Year's Day 1987 party at
Don Henley's Aspen, Colorado ranch.
The relationship between Hart and Donna quickly progressed, with a group trip to the Bahamas and later a weekend at Hart's Washington DC townhouse.
Rice and Hart took an overnight yachting trip in March to the island of Bimini with friend and Hart fund-raiser Bill Broadhurst where Donna's friend Lynn Armandt, who accompanied her on both trips with Hart took photographs of Rice sitting on Hart's lap wearing a t-shirt that said "Monkey Business" and then sold photographs and stories about Rice to the National Enquirer and People magazine, that led to Hart's withdrawal from the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.
Following the scandal, she became an advocate for children's safety on the internet, and has been president and CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Enough Is Enough since 2002.
