Deborah Jane Rowe (born December 6, 1958) is an American nurse, known for being the ex-wife of pop musician Michael Jackson and mother to Prince and Paris.
Relationship with Michael[]
Debbie met Jackson in the mid-1980s while she was working as an assistant for his dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein. Rowe treated Jackson's vitiligo, which he had been diagnosed with in 1986 and which would affect his physical appearance for the remainder of his life. Rowe supported Jackson, providing answers to the questions he asked about his medical condition. The pair became good friends; the pop star frequently sent autographed merchandise to the woman, who hung it on the walls of her office. According to her friend Tanya Boyd, Rowe would obsess over Jackson. She would say to her friend, "If people knew him like I knew him, they would not think he was strange. He's unique, kinky, actually."
The Jackson–Rowe friendship would last for several years, during which time Rowe married and divorced Richard Edelman, a man she claimed to have felt trapped by. Rowe and Jackson would both talk to each other about their unhappy marriages; his with Lisa Marie Presley and hers with Edelman, a teacher at Hollywood High School. Like Jackson's first wife, Rowe supported the entertainer when he was accused of child sexual abuse. Jackson kept his friendship with Rowe a secret from his wife, who eventually found out but thought nothing of it; she felt Rowe was not her husband's type because she was not glamorous enough.
Marriage[]
Rowe recalled that after Jackson's divorce from Lisa in 1996, upset that he might not become a father, Rowe proposed to bear his children. In an interview with Playboy, Lisa Marie stated that she knew at the time that she and Jackson were married 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, Michael consoled her the whole way through, it was announced Rowe was pregnant again in 1996, and the two got married on November 14, 1996, in Sydney, Australia. By 1997, Jackson and Rowe had their first child, Michael Joseph "Prince" Jackson, Jr., and a year later had their daughter Paris Michael-Katharine Jackson. Rowe later stated that she had been artificially inseminated and never had sex with Jackson. Jackson took full responsibility for raising the children.
Divorce[]
In April 2000, Debbie asked Michael for a divorce, which was granted. Rowe received around $10 million in a settlement, which started with an immediate payment of $1.5 million. With the divorce, Rowe gave Jackson full custody rights to Michael Jr. and Paris. They concluded that despite coming to the end of married life, they would continue to remain friends.
| “ | My kids don't call me Mom because I don't want them to. They're Michael's children. It's not that they are not my children, but I had them because I wanted him to be a father. People make remarks, 'I can't believe she left her children.' Left them? I left my children? I did not leave my children. My children are with their father, where they are supposed to be. I didn't do it to be a mother... If he called me tonight and said let's have five more [children], I'd do it in a heartbeat. | ” |
–Debbie Rowe, The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See | ||
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, who is of the Jewish religion, 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 noted that "[b]ecause 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 explained that she had been granted limited visits to her children, for eight hours every 45 days. After Jackson's death, Rowe reached a settlement with Katherine Jackson, the children's guardian, under which Rowe has rights to supervised visitations. In 2016, Rowe was diagnosed with breast cancer.