Background and career
Deborah Jeanne Rowe (born December 6, 1958) is a medical assistant based in the United States who famously became the second wife of pop musician Michael Jackson, with whom she mothered two children.
Deborah Jeanne Rowe was born on December 6, 1958, in Spokane, Washington, to Barbara Chilcutt and Gordon Rowe. Her father divorced her mother a few weeks before her second birthday. She was raised by her mother, a few aunts, and her maternal grandmother.
Rowe married Richard Edelman in 1982 and converted to Judaism. The couple divorced six years later.
Rowe met Michael Jackson while working as an assistant in Arnold Klein's dermatology office, where Jackson was being treated for vitiligo. She recalled that after Jackson's divorce from Lisa Marie Presley in 1996, he was upset that he might never become a father. Rowe, a longtime Jackson fan, proposed to bear his children. In an interview with Playboy, Lisa Marie said that during her marriage to Jackson, he knew that Rowe wanted to have his children and that Rowe had "a crush on him".
Rowe had suffered a miscarriage in 1996, which devastated her. Jackson consoled her throughout the ordeal, and it was announced Rowe was pregnant again in 1996; the two were married on November 15, 1996, in Sydney, Australia. Rowe had a son, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. (born February 13, 1997, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles), who was subsequently nicknamed Prince. On April 3, 1998, she gave birth to daughter Paris Jackson at Spaulding Pain Medical Clinic in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. Jackson took full responsibility for raising the children.
Rowe, who has called herself a private person and almost never gives interviews, was overwhelmed by the publicity that came with being married to Jackson. The couple divorced in April 2000, and Rowe gave Jackson full custody of the children. She received an $8 million settlement and a house in Beverly Hills. Court documents indicate she had signed a prenuptial agreement and, therefore, could not obtain an equal division of community property under California law. In 2001, Rowe went to a private judge to have her parental rights for the two children terminated. In 2004, after Jackson was charged with 10 counts of child abuse, she went to court to have the decision reversed. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rowe sought the reversal in part because she feared the nanny and some of Jackson's siblings were exposing the children to teachings of the Nation of Islam. Court documents from 2005 say, "Because she is Jewish, Deborah feared the children might be mistreated if Michael continued the association." On the stand, in the 2005 People v. Jackson case, she said she had been granted visits with her children for eight hours every 45 days. In 2005, Rowe sold her Beverly Hills house for $1.3 million and bought a ranch in Palmdale. In 2006, she sued Jackson for one immediate payment of $195,000 and one payment of $50,000 to pursue a child custody case. Jackson was ordered to pay her $60,000 in legal fees.
