Monica Lewinsky

American activist, television personality, fashion designer, and former White House intern. President Bill Clinton admitted to having had what he called an "inappropriate relationship" with Lewinsky while she worked at the White House in 1995–1996. In 1998 she thus became the focus of a sex-scandal that rocked the presidency. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known later as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.

Monica's parents had been married four years when she was born and her brother Michael followed on 30 December 1977. The two kids grew up with a life of privilege in Beverly Hills, California. When she was 14, on 21 September 1987, her parents had a messy divorce. Her mother got a restraining order to keep her father from "threatening and assaulting the family." He acknowledged that they lived beyond their means and owed more than $100,000 in back taxes, but denied abuse.

Her mother, Marcia Lewis, is an author of an unauthorized tell-all book, "The Private Lives of the Three Tenors," about the alleged sex lives of Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, and Placido Domingo. Her dad was a radiologist and both had a taste for high living.

In Beverly Hills high school she appeared in school musicals and was named in the year-book, "the girl most likely to get her name in lights." A pretty girl, she was always a bit on the heavy side, with big, lustrous black hair. Monica graduated from a posh prep school in 1991 that cost $12,000 a year tuition. She briefly went to Santa Monica college before transferring in 1993 to Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR where she made the dean's list.

In May 1995, she earned a degree in psychology and moved to Washington DC where her mom was living. She began a job at the White House as a staffer, a 21-year-old political intern. In 1997, she became buddies with another White House employee, Linda Tripp, and they became confidantes.